Flynn decided not to move. Why bother? Even with the view of the giant army come to kill him, it was much nicer out on the ledge than stuck in the tower. He realized with a pang to his gut how much he missed the sky over his head and the breeze against his face. Funny, he'd never though he'd miss being exposed and basically homeless. But then maybe it was more about the freedom than about the risk of hypothermia.
Rapunzel made several trips into the tower, coming back each time with her arms loaded with stuff. Feigning disinterest, he watched her blankly over his shoulder every time she popped up to add to her ever growing pile of raw materials. Copper tubing. A marmalade jar full of corks, soaking in some sort of liquid. A gigantic rubber band. Who knew what she was up to.
She'd shoot him a smile and push her hair back out of her eyes and dart off into the dark once more.
He shook his head and turned back to the chameleon. He didn't care if she told him her latest weird plot. She clearly wasn't going to let him in on it, so why bother getting irritated? He had several other things to brood on already.
Pascal recorded him for a moment, then rewound the tape to play back the sound of a sigh. Oh God. Had that noise really come out of his mouth? Flynn stared at it, aghast.
The chameleon played the sound twice more, each time grating against Flynn's frazzled nerves with greater and greater precision.
Then Pascal took Flynn's picture, blinding him momentarily and causing him to duck his head instinctively to hide from the troops below. After a moment in which he was not murdered, he turned to glare to the chameleon, who sighed at him again.
Ugg. He was probably making a horribly unattractive face in that picture too.
"Okay!" Rapunzel whispered behind him, surveying her collection of weird stuff with her hands clasped against her chest. "I think this is everything." Then she flopped to the floor in a flourish of puffy skirt and went after the copper tubing with a tape measure.
He watched her, still not understanding what she was doing, but entranced none the less by the practiced movements of her hands and the look of concentration that settled about her lips, about her eyes. She brushed her hair from her face again, missing a few damp strands that had stuck to her forehead. She blinked a few times as if fighting off dizziness, then returned to her work with renewed determination.
She sealed the end of one tube, then slipped in inside a second, wider tube, checking for an airtight seal and for how well they could move against one another. She added big globs of grease that of course got in her hair and on her dress, but seemed to improve whatever she was doing. That's what he gathered from he expression, anyway.
She pulled out a screw driver from one of her pockets, holding a set of screws in her mouth as she attached the ends of the elastic band to the tower wall so it spanned the window. For a second Flynn thought she was roping him off, but then she started checking the elasticity, pulling it back and making marks on the floor, adjusting the screws and checking their strength.
"You need me to move?" he asked, not really wanted to get slapped with a giant rubber band.
"What? Oh! Yes! Come hold this."
The chameleon placed itself on his shoulder as he wriggled his way back into the tower. He knelt down next to Rapunzel as she narrowed her eyes, brought her face close to the screws, leaned back, then bent forward again at a different angle. She repeated this over and over – an adjustment here, a hum in thought there.
Pascal sighed from his shoulder, and Rapunzel reached up to stroke its head absently before Flynn could shove it off or groan too loudly. Her fingers brushed against his neck, the tingling effect of which was neutralized as the chameleon began to tick rapidly in a kind of purr that shook Flynn's whole shoulder.
"Okay," she said at last, handing him the slack elastic band. "Hold this and stretch it out as far as you can."
He raised an eyebrow at it, then at her. "Is this from your skirt?"
She laughed. "Not this skirt."
"Ah. Right. How could I be so stupid?"
She shrugged with a happy, little smile, her thin shoulders raising to her ears then collapsing back into place with a deep exhale and an eyelash bat.
He decided to ignore her crazy attitude and focus more on her nutty science experiment. He stood and after testing the elastic a moment, pulled it back and tight, like a slingshot aimed out the window. He held it still as she inspected it, checking the screws to make sure they wouldn't snap back and kill him or catapult him down the stairs, then twanging one side of the band.
"Can you pull it more?"
"Yep." He strained against the band, pulling as hard as he could to show off the strength in his arms that amazingly (but unexpectedly) failed to impress her. She was too busy fussing with her tape measure again, making marks on the floor.
"Lower it just a bit... More... There!"
She made several more marks, reaching up to pluck at the band again, blinking several times in a daze before adjusting her tape measure and making even more marks. His arms started to get tired.
"Hmm." She sunk back onto her heels. "Okay. You can let go now."
He did gratefully, trying to release it gently so it wouldn't snap, trying not to let the effort show. Pascal sighed again as he plopped onto the floor next to Rapunzel.
She stared at the marks she'd made, rubbing her temple with her fingers and frowning. Her eyes looked glazed, but it could have been the dull light of the lantern and the fatigue of the day.
"Hey, are you alright?"
"What? Yeah. I'm just..." She shook her head and trailed off, then she seemed to forget he was there again as she reached for a weird brass fitting and a bunch of heavy duty nails.
She grabbed a heavy duty hammer and secured the fitting to the windowsill with a great deal of loud, echoing pounding. Flynn flinched at every hit and Pascal grew more and more agitated, spinning in a little circle and emitting random bursts of steam from his sides. With the noise she was making, the army outside would surely know they were up to something. Or maybe they'd be just as confused and concerned as Flynn. That would be nice.
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall in as much an effort to show how little he cared as it was an attempt to not be hit with all the tiny, flying bits of mortar.
After way longer than it should have taken to nail something to something else and several grumpy mutterings about how she missed her goggles, Rapunzel put down her hammer and inspected the strength of the fastening, wiping sweat from her forehead. She looked ill.
"You want to take a break, Blondie? Catch a nap?"
"No," she chirped, but it sounded wistful almost, like a sigh. She grabbed her pipe within a pipe, which was long enough to be awkward for her to handle, and started connecting one end to the fastening on the window sill. Flynn stepped forward to hold the other end of the pipe up off the floor, freeing up both her hands for her to bolt down some things and bust out a soldering iron.
Because nothing said sanity and safety like a soldering iron.
She let it set for a moment before testing it, turning it left and right like a rudder, up and down like a water pump, then around in easy circles. Without a word, she moved into Flynn's personal space to attach the other end of the pipe to the middle of the elastic band with what looked like fast acting glue. Her construction project began to take on the form of a crossbow made out of random household scrap and nails.
Rapunzel disappeared down the stairs again, leaving Flynn to hold her project. He started having trouble holding it up, not because it was growing steadily heavier the later it got (which it kind of was), but just because of its general unwieldiness. He shifted and considered just setting his end on the ground, but that might mess up her soldering or glue or something.
Pascal sighed.
He heard her return before he saw her through the dark as she dragged one of the heavy wooden dining chairs up the stairs. He moved to help her, but he was stuck holding her crossbow, so he just stood there a moment looking useless and waiting for her.
She slumped into the chair when she reached the landing, and while she was still sitting in it, Flynn maneuvered it around with a groan of wood scraping on wood. Then he rested her contraption against one of the horizontal slats in the chair back and slumped to onto the chair himself, nudging her to one side.
For a moment they sat there as he rolled his tired neck from side to side and she rubbed her temple again, looking as though she might doze off at any moment.
"Okaaaay," he said. "So, I know it's pointless to ask about – well - this." He gestured to the mess she'd made and half attached to the wall. "But... what are you doing?"
"I thought I'd make a gun," she said, leaning to the side to use his shoulder as a pillow.
"... What?"
She nuzzled into his neck and pulled his arm into a weak hug. "We can shoot at them and they won't send the siege towers after us."
He stared down at her. She didn't look like she was up for answering questions, but now he was painfully curious. "What were you planning on shooting at them? Is there a stock pile of bullets in here that I don't know about?"
She laughed a little, but it sounded a bit like Pascal's obnoxious sighing noise. "I'll use these," she said, nudging the jar full of corks with her foot.
"Corks?"
She nodded.
"Oh yeah," he drawled, rolling his eyes. "They'll piss themselves in fear and surrender immediately."
"You don't like it?"
"They're corks. Chucking them at the Corona army will just mildly irritate them."
"They'll be moving very fast. That can be dangerous."
"And this thing has great aim, am I right? You can hit every single soldier right in the eye until they're all blind and have to stumble home."
She considered that a moment, staring at her cork jar. "I don't think I have enough corks to hit all of them."
"Well, if you run out of corks, you can throw pillows at them."
"I don't want to light my pillow on fire. I like my pillow."
"You- Wait. Light on fire?"
She nodded against his shoulder. "To burn down the siege towers."
Flynn paused. That was... that was actually a good idea. And knowing Rapunzel it might actually work.
He hopped up to look at her crossbow more closely, and she groaned when the shoulder she had been leaning against disappeared.
"What's the range on this?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. I just made it."
He grinned down at her. "You want to try now?"
She beaming back, glad that he was eager to try one of her ideas and that he didn't seem as mad or distant anymore. She reached out for his hand and he helped pull her to her feet.
Grabbing the cork jar off the floor, she pushed a pair of tongs into Flynn's hands. Then, gripping the jar with both hands and making a strained face, she unscrewed the top before Flynn could offer to help her. She took the tongs from him and used them to fish out one of the corks. The smell of alcohol as soon as she opened the jar made his eyes water.
"I use them as fire starters," she said. "They light really easily."
In the dim light from the lantern, the jar looked as though it were filled with some kind of preserved animal specimen – newt eyeballs or squid tentacles. She made a movement as though reaching for her goggles, then stopped herself and carried on. With deep concentration, she shook the cork so it wasn't dripping and instructed him to pull back the tubes.
He hurriedly kicked the chair out of the way like a bit of a spaz, and pulled the thinner tube back, causing them to telescope outward, causing the rubber band to stretch brutally. He braced his feet and clenched his jaw, fighting against the elastic.
"You good?" she asked.
"Yeah. Just make it fast."
She took the cork gingerly between her slender fingers, then crammed it in the front end of the piping with a hollow, metal plunk. Then she grabbed a candle lighter, quickly set it aflame in the lantern and reached out for the cork, which lit with a WOOSH that had her jumping backward and nearly caused him to lose his grip
"Alright, let go!" she shouted over the roar of the fire.
"Shouldn't we aim or something?"
"What? Oh!" She tried to look out the window, but couldn't see anything over the flames and the rising cloud of smoke. "Aim for the explosives."
Flynn couldn't see much either, but he swiveled around to aim a bit to the right and then, unable to hold it longer, let go with a twang. The pipes snapped together, the pressure expelling the cork like a bullet from a gun, sending it rocketing out of the tower and towards the camp below.
They coughed and fanned away the smoke trail, as they leaned out over the cork gun to watch their projectile's progress. It flew away, growing smaller and dimmer, then for a moment it disappeared completely.
Then a tent caught fire.
"Yay!" Rapunzel sighed.
It had traveled far enough, but it had landed a bit to the left of the munitions tent. Shouts rose up from below, and Flynn pulled her back inside and set to aiming the gun again.
"We have to hit it before they move everything out of range. Load her up again."
Rapunzel was already on it, grabbing another cork. He waited until she had it ready in her hand before pulling the elastic back and letting her light it.
"Fire!"
Another twang and the cork was loose, soaring over the camp to land in the dark. The shouting when it hit its mark was instantaneous.
The explosion took a moment.
A deafening boom echoed through the valley, causing Rapunzel to shrink back, her eyes wide in fear and awe and excitement. And a great dome of an explosion burst from the tent, sending flaming bits of crates and tent poles, of ripped fabric and dynamite casing flying through the air, setting light to other tents.
Most of the north side of the camp was on fire, the men scrambling and shouting and running to the stream for water.
Flynn and Rapunzel pulled back, taking their places for another shot.
"Try for the siege towers this time," she instructed.
He nodded, hauled the pipes back, held them just long enough for her to set it alight, then let it fly.
This one didn't make it far enough, but it did sent another tent on fire.
Flynn frowned.
"Here. Tilt it up," she said, slipping to the floor and pulling the back end down towards her. She craned her neck to look out the window and try to judge the distance. "It might go farther."
The angle was hard to maintain, and he ended up on the floor with his foot braced against the dinning room chair, but it did make the cork go farther.
One of the siege towers began to burn.
They decided to shoot another cork into the general area, just to make sure they destroyed them all.
"What now?" she asked, watching the flames spread across the valley. With a creaking groan, one of the siege towers collapsed as tents folded in on themselves, their fabric lit from within and billowing like ghosts.
"Want to hit the officer's tents?" he asked with a smirk.
She nodded, pulling another cork out of the bottle and wiping her sweaty forehead on her sleeve. Her eyes were glassy again, her face more tired than chipper despite their obvious victory.
"You sure you're alright?"
"Yeah," she said, but her voice was small and not at all convincing.
He couldn't tell if he should call her on it or not, and pulled the gun into position for their last shot, which she loaded more slowly than she had before, her fingers slipping as she stuffed in the cork.
Silently, she watched it fly away, a slight frown across her lips. She made another movement for the goggles that weren't there, shivered, and hugged herself.
Without thinking, overcome with their latest, ridiculous success, he reached to rub her back, and she leaned into him instinctively, her forehead feverish against his cheek, her breath a struggling wheeze.
He frowned, the concern evident in his face and his actions as he wrapped his arm more securely about her shoulders. "You're not alright," he said.
She made a weak noise, trembled another moment, then slumped completely as another siege tower collapsed and Pascal took several flashing pictures in quick succession.
"Rapunzel? Rapunzel?" She didn't move, even when he shook her, and in a moment she was in his arms and he was rushing her downstairs and the valley was blazing below them.