Whoa, exactly 1,111 views for 11 chapters, thanks for everything. This chapter was a bit crazy to write, hope you have fun reading. It feels slightly funny to write a dark bloody chapter and then go back to the cute and funny stuff.
faisyah865: Aw thanks a lot! Hope you're enjoying the UK, the weather's frankly not too bad right now compared to usual. And as is obvious, deaths are non-canon, so you'll need to read in order to know who lives! I don't particularly enjoy killing off people for fun though, so most of your favourites should be okay… should they? I'm glad you liked the Merida fangirly thingy.
Chapter 12, where one egg is cooked and one is about to be eaten, even though not the same one as the one that has been cooked.
CW: violence, mention of death, [costume porn, McGuffin]
"Madam, they lost the connection," repeated Lord McGuffin, "this means only one thing."
Oblivious to the mercenaries marching around the interior yard just below the mezzanine, Elinor DunBroch was pacing restlessly. Mr. Corona had refused to see anyone, including herself, after losing contact with the Stabbingtons that held his daughter hostage, and such a man being in such a state could only mean trouble. The golden frills of her dark green, pleated crinoline brushed the metal floor as she walked, ever so slightly muffling the echo of her elaborate pumps. The red, orange and lilac tall feathers over her hat wavered regularly, bouncing off the thin lace veil before her eyes. Her hands nervously clutched the gold-embroidered fabric of her corset. Her hair, held up in a sophisticated braided bun ornate with cog-shaped pins of different sizes, was silently beaded with sweat.
"What is the last thing we heard from them?"
"Through the recordings our experts obtained by tweaking with their radiomessage frequency bands, everything indicates an extremely powerful deflagration cut off the signal. What we can most likely infer is that the zeppelin suffered a technical incident, maybe there was a fuel leakage or…"
"This doesn't mean that Miss Rapunzel Corona is …"
She interrupted herself, too disturbed to continue. After all, Jerome was a parent of an only daughter far away from his control, just as she was.
"I regret to reiterate it, but Mr. Corona will listen to no one, not even you, madam."
"Milord, I am not even asking to talk to him as a trade partner or as an advisor, but as a mother. I have a daughter, too, and the Man in the Moon knows how many times I have feared for her life and taken rash decisions. Miss Corona has travelled thus far on her own for the first time, and I understand her father is… destabilised, but allow me to offer my experience and counsel."
A squadron of soldiers unceremoniously ran in between them, somewhat crumpling her expensive skirts. She withheld a swearword, before whipping out her crimson fan embroidered with the bear of DunBroch.
"What on Earth is wrong with them?"
"Ma'am, apologies," their leader called out, still jogging. "Mr. Corona's taken the command himself, and asked for everyone to be ready to fly out."
"But our flotilla is not going anywhere until we agree on attack plan on the Drifter camp with Stoick the Vast?"
"Nay, Ma'am, we're striking the Weselton Exposition."
The Weselton Exposition. Her whalebone fan fell to the floor with a sharp sound. A mute gasp escaped from her lips. The Weselton Exposition. Oh, Merida, her one and only, her brave and beautiful daughter. The. Weselton. Exposition. She watched powerless as her own troops marched out in perfect order, ready to attack the zeppelin her eldest child was aboard. She watched as the merciless game of power she had played in closed like a trap onto her, the mighty chessboard she lifted collapse onto her world. She watched as Jerome Corona was absent yet everywhere, in the heavy step of every soldier and the thunder of zeppelin turbines, in the regular breath of the running men and the clatter of arrows in quivers. She watched the man she had trusted and supported blinded by his rage, as things just got out of his control. She watched as his plan unfolded before her eyes, to take his bloody revenge on those Stabbingtons who dared touch his daughter, those Weseltons that hired them and those Andersens that sponsored those, all that she had contributed to antagonise. She watched as the gigantic automaton she had tried to handle tripped from its balance, as the equilibrium she had strived to maintain suddenly shattered like the hard but brittle shell of an egg. As the colossal engine of the Colonies rolled down the slope towards war, sparked by what seemed like a single zeppelin incident. There had been hostages, alliances, negotiations. But now the hells were about to break loose, and she could only watch with her the eyes of a woman and those of a mother.
Why did the machine of Fate, that maintained peace in every aspect of their lives, get jammed in by such petty bugs? An aircraft accident, a teenager's tantrum, young hopeful ambitions, curious juvenile love, innocent dreams for a better place. It was those puny accidents that were about to wreak havoc, ruining years of equilibrium into a future of chaos, all their destinies tumbling profoundly and irremediably intertwined.
Her hands found some comfort in the stark coldness of the thin iron rail of the mezzanine. Through her clammy fingers, a temporary sensation of calm rushed through her body. In a world of steel and steam where everything spun and whirled in terrifying synchronisation, what was there right against her skin felt so right, so real. Maybe she had some control, after all. Maybe she could seize her fate between her hands. She had to speak to the General.
One hour earlier
Following Mrs. Evelyn Rose Corona's most insightful advice, in that time where she had nothing but fierce despair and a handful of ideas, Rapunzel was frying an egg. Where she had even obtained an egg aboard a barge suspended to a zeppelin in the middle of the sky, flying over the Extremesian coastline, actually made perfect sense, as she had asked for one from her captors. Ernest-not-Ernest and Not-Ernest-Ernest Stabbington being proudly from Cornucopia, they had eggs for breakfast aboard their airship, and could see no harm in satisfying her request when she had begged for one. How on Earth – or rather, in the sky – she was going about frying it was slightly more interesting. Obviously, she was nowhere near a hob on her wooden boat. Even more obviously, there was no way the mercenaries could have given her a constellite-based heater or anything else that vaguely resembled a weapon. So that she stood, under the boiling sunlight over the wooden deck, hundreds of feet between her and the forest below, frying an egg in her frying-pan-mirror-compass-pocket watch, while one of the brothers, that she had mentally nicknamed Ernie, held a magnifying glass above the egg to focus the bright rays of the sun onto the raw egg.
The rather perplexed and hostile eyes around her ever so slightly narrowed as she attempted to flip it. The Stabbington brothers, noticing her distinctively Cornucopian taste when it came to the cuisine of egg, nodded to each other in approval. However, they dropped their smile to collectively face palm as she clumsily managed to get her egg to slide off the edge of her pan and fall onto the deck. A short instant of confusion occurred, followed by a quick succession of events.
Not-Ernie volunteered to bend down and scoop up the fallen half-cooked egg.
Rapunzel walloped him in the head with her frying pan.
Half a dozen guards ran towards her to immobilise her.
In the confusion, Eugene snatched the magnifying glass away from Ernie and ran towards the ship's mast.
Before anyone had time to realise what was going on, he crushed the glass lens with his boot and held up one of the shards to saw at the ropes that tied the sails to the mast. The brittle shard was not ideal, but he would have to do with whatever he found. With agility, he climbed up the wooden pole as he sliced off the knots. Some of the Stabbingtons' henchmen came after him, even though unsure of what his motives were, but he easily pushed them off with his boots. Rapunzel, on the other hand, was in more difficulty. After her initial advantage of surprise, she was quickly losing ground to the larger and better-trained mercenaries. Tripping over her own long braid, she fell down onto the deck. Immediately, strong arms grabbed her and pinned her against the figurehead. She gasped as Not-Ernie's imposing figure walked toward her, the blades on both his mechanical gauntlets fully expanded. And again as he slipped on some still-liquid egg that stained the deck.
Seizing her chance, she fiercely held out her pan in front of her. He was too far for her to even think of trying a throw, but she had another idea in mind. An accomplished young maiden of her kind was not without knowing that an incurved mirror could reflect and focus light ahead of it. Subtly tilting it, she managed to convey an intensely hot beam into Not-Ernie's left eye. The large man collapsed with a yelp. At last hours of sketching geometric ray diagrams had proven of certain usefulness.
Furious, Ernie had the sense to knock the weapon out of her hands. However, as it went flying into the air, the agile Flynn beat him at catching it. Knocking out his pursuers with a deft gesture, he cut off the last piece of rope, just beneath the surface of the zeppelin's belly, releasing the sturdy brown sail to beat in the wind. Contemplating their plan's progress, the blonde woman nodded at him, earning a beaming smolder in return.
Their satisfaction was short-lived. One-eyed Not-Ernie kicked the wooden mast with his bladed boot, causing it to collapse across the ship. The heavy sail covered the majority of the deck. From the figurehead, Rapunzel dashed across the fabric-covered planks towards her betrothed. He clung to the wooden pole in mid-air off the deck, desperately trying to reach the frying pan that dangled off the mast's end.
"Leave it! Get back on!" she yelled.
"You're not losing that thing. It contains the seed from your mother!"
"Forget it! I want you alive!"
"How? There's no way the plan's going to work - "
He was right, there was no way they could reach the zeppelin's belly and steal some helium to fill the sail and use it as a parachute. There was no way they were going to stay alive, let alone escape. The ship's mast had collapsed, and so had the central axle sustaining the well-oiled cogs of their crafty plan. They were going to…
" – PUNZ!" she heard Eugene call.
The young heiress turned around, alas too late. A mercenary, freeing himself from the sturdy sail, had shot a dart of raw constellite straight at her. Killing a hostage was pretty stupid. But also pretty efficient.
In a split second, Rapunzel's reflexes came alive. Her ball-game skills being truly deplorable, the chances she would have been able to react in any way sensible were rather minuscule. But as her mind, petrified in panic, refused to function, her instincts took control. She raised her palm in the air and…
"NO!" yelled Flynn.
… caught the dart inside her hand. He watched as streams of blood poured from the delicate white palm where the impact hit. As, soundlessly, the constellite crystal grew at the contact of her skin into a small dendritic flower, gleaming suddenly yellow. As, progressively, her tangled plait of silky hair started to dimly glower in the same menacing hue of gold. As, without a word, she threw the sunlight-loaded crystal straight into the belly of the dirigible.
And the airship burst into flames. The inside gas, devoured by the golden fire, tore apart the fine envelope like the shell of a shattered egg, revealing the dark metallic skeleton against the brightness. Clouds of smoke burned the air, suffocating those on the barge's deck. A rain of debris fell over them, mercenaries, tradesmen and heiresses alike, sharp and incandescent. And they started to fall. Scraps of metal, fabric, wood and cinders filled Rapunzel's thick hair as she desperately reached out for Flynn.
Unsteadily clinging to the mast, in anti-gravity, she felt the rough wood against the thin fabric of her dress and the flying sparks and shards whipping her back. Whether she caught his hand or not, they would die. Whether they fell off or not, they would die. Whether the zeppelin's ignited carcass fell over them or not, they would die. Such was the engine of face, powerful and implacable, sending them to whirl to their impending doom. Such was the engine, so beautifully intricate, so intricately lethal, that was killing men grown and children, warriors and businessmen, employees and heirs, all of them into chaos and death. Such was the engine that could not care less about their petty agreements and betrayals, their negotiations and wars, their plans and hopes, for all would end up in an undistinguishable mess of carbonised flesh and bones. Such was the engines, and at least, oh, she had been its gunman.
For a fraction of a second she contemplated the world beneath them, the emerald canopy and the imminent freedom.
She barely registered as Flynn seized her hand and sprung, bouncing off the mast and the falling ship, their fingers locked together, their sweaty and sooty skins against each other, their breaths intoxicatingly intertwined, for mere seconds.
They collided with the cold. With the dark. The dark and cold was all around them. Too icy, too painful, too tetanising, too wet for them to possibly be dead. As Rapunzel finally dared to open her eyes underwater, the first thing she saw was the filaments of golden light slowly undulating, dimly illuminating the darkness. At first she mistook them for algae, before she realised that it was her hair set loose that was gently fluorescent, waving in the water before her eyes. She read the relief on Flynn's traits as he saw her wide open green eyes and felt the slight pressure of her fingers on his. The silence was serene. The silence was everything.
Abruptly she remembered a nursery rhyme from her childhood about a bright flower, and somehow her overwhelmed mind found it amusing. She realised he was confused by the laughter she struggled to stifle underwater. A stream of bubbles and life escaped from the corner of her lips, and icy water started to fill her mouth…
Then his lips met hers. Warm, tender, desperate, violent, hopeful. As the air filled her lungs again, a wave of raw emotion crashed through her body. Oh… The water was a turquoise calm around them. Her hair wrapped them in a delicate halo of golden strands. Her svelte fingers rested on the comfort of his chest, against the fold of his breast pocket…
His breast pocket that gleamed softly in gold. As she felt the small, hard object, she remembered the lantern's constellite core that they had hidden in there. Fumbling with the button, she eventually managed to extract it into her hand. With a swift wrist flick, she tossed it to explode in the darkness beneath them. The detonation, pushing the waters apart, propelled them upwards.
Arms, hair, lips, fingers interwoven, as two becoming one, they pierced the surface in a single flash of light.
They hardly knew how they ended up there, on the lake's bank, the tragic remnants of the barge, the zeppelin and their passengers floating over the surface, still aflame, illuminating the trees and the water's depths. They hardly knew how much time had elapsed. Well, Flynn had some idea, judging by the cramp in his arms from swimming and holding onto Rapunzel. The blonde young woman allowed herself a slight smile, staring into his hazel eyes. Her darkened wet hair was plastered to both their skins and clothes, entangled into their limbs and into the tree roots beneath them.
They ignored for how long they sat there, motionlessly and wordlessly, as the carnage finished to burn before them. Somewhat the rumble of a steamcar's motor interrupted their fitful daze. They could barely hear the diligent steps directed towards them, or make any sense out of the voices that addressed them.
"Sir, Madam, are you harmed?"
"Can you walk?"
"Can you tell us what happened?"
"Come with us."
"I'm Gerda, and that's Kai."
Dry arms helped them up, wrapping around their soaked bodies. They stumbled their way towards a graceful steamcar on a path between the tree roots, shaped like an elegant conch, all in visible brass machinery and nacre-tainted metal, large circular lights and windows staring at them like empty eyes. An impressive assortment of suitcases and hat boxes of all sizes and tones was strapped onto its roof, chocolate brown, royal blue, anise green, bright rose and patterned gold. The steam, produced by constellite heating, powered the intricate system of levers and pistons, releasing a puff of condensed vapour into the mangrove's hot air. Kai courteously opened the door, letting the two wet fugitives collapse onto the brown leather-covered banquette carved in tropical wood into abstract, flowing vegetal patterns. Gerda and Kai sat in the driver seats at the front of the vehicle, compartmented from the rest by a thick velvet curtain. It took them some time to notice that facing them sat a comely young woman, two symmetric strawberry blonde braids falling onto each of her shoulders, draped in a fashionable sky blue and pale fuchsia dress. A fresh smile parted her pink lips and coloured her freckled cheeks.
"You're… you're Rapunzel Corona!" she exclaimed enthusiastically.
Soaked and exhausted Punz could do nothing but confirm with a small nod. The warm gaze of her beautiful turquoise eyes slightly reassured her. She wanted to believe they were in no danger. Eugene mentally face palmed, hardly having the strength left to physically do so. What tiny scrap of a cover his wary mind was trying to patch up had been blow up in seconds.
"Miss Rapunzel of Crowsworth, I am so excited to finally meet you. I have heard about you so many times, even though a whole ocean has been separating us. Your father is an admirable man in every way, and he has raised a daughter who is in every aspect wet…-xceptional, er… I'm so sorry to first meet you in such… unconventional ways, I mean… Do you want to come with us? Oh, it seems like I haven't really given you a choice, have I? We were on our way when we noticed your giant flaming mess, so we had to stop. We're heading towards Snowtown, where my fiancé owns a cotton plant. We left the Weselton Exposition by the sea to move into his place to get acquainted to his people and his family. He rides in a car ahead of ours with my eldest sister, I mean, of course she wouldn't let me ride with him alone. Well, Hans and I have been engaged for, um, less than a month, in fact less than a week, in fact, less than a day. But we've known each other for about – oh, about a day? I have to warn you, my sister's a bit… how to put this… cold? I mean, really beautiful and everything, but… oh, I'm so sorry! I've been so rude, I haven't even introduced myself! I'm Lady Anna, Baroness of Arendelle. You look famished, would you like something to eat?"
But all Rapunzel could wish for right then was a warm shower and a bed. Under its pocket watch form, her shapeshifting trinket safely sat in her closed fist. Resisting the drooping of her eyelids, she managed to stutter:
"Any – anything but fr – fried - "
"How about this?"
The cheerful baroness produced from her purse a beautifully ornate painted chocolate egg.
Fun fact: I watched the Hindenburg disaster 1937 footage to write the zeppelin crash. Pretty impressive stuff, I recommend it if you're bored. Also, I deliberately made Rapunzel kind-of-English even though she's suggested to be German in canon. My excuse is that the people in her film, all apart from herself and Mother Gothel (Pascal kind of works either way), have English-sounding names (i.e. Flynn Rider/Eugene Fitzeherbert and the Stabbington brothers). Why fluorescence – there is some light from above, including from the zeppelin on fire, and fluorescent things sometimes dimly shine in darkness (no, I did not mean phosphorescent). On a slightly different note, Hans did mean business with his joke threats at the Exposition ball, didn't he? ;)
Announcement: Eh, I don't really have an announcement to make, other than Jack is in the next chapter (for those who are asking, because, yeah). The order of chapters, as you must have noticed, doesn't really cycle cleanly through the character PoV's anymore, as their plots are converging soon… Does this story even make sense? Please constructively comment, R&R, F&F, stay awesome etc. Right, I should get cracking on the next chapter…