Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.
Note to Mir: Isaac's story will be weird, because it's badly written! Yes, Neal did see television in Victorian London. I only watched the pilot of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, but it seemed to be the same Victorian London World that Neal had been to 200 years later (and in this fake story he traveled to Alice's time with the Merry Men). Alice's world/time period had technology but was Victorian in the way that Earth-2 on The Flash has technology but the overall design of the world is stuck in the pre-WWII Art Deco period. The singing world is actually a referenece to Galavant (like the Wormwood thing!), but I do see it as suffering a curse like on Buffy, which was actually my thought to explain it if I ever wrote a crossover with Galavant. Some readers wanted "Cosmo" for Baby Neal's name after I made the Seinfeld reference as a possibility, so I felt obliged to give to a Neal. The Mad Hatter's philosophy is based on one of several theories about deja vu from Fringe.
PART II
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE WEIRD SISTERS
"My what?" sputtered Neal.
"Your son," Henry repeated.
"That's impossible. You can't possibly be my son."
Henry rolled his eyes. "Well, I am."
"Well, you were misinformed," Neal shot back. "I mean, I had a pretty long dry spell after Tinkerbell. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but what with being on the run from Snow White..."
"You had sex with Tinkerbell!?" Henry sputtered, horrified.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," said Neal, bewildered. "She's a very hot and naughty fairy. And not very many guys can say they've shagged a fairy, what with the usual anatomical incompatibilities."
"It's true," nodded Bo Peep. "Fairies might be meddling little cunts, but they don't have actual cunts unless their wings are taken. They're like those Barbie Dolls the Hatter collected down there!"
"Should have known better than to trust a man who played with girlie dolls that don't have girlie parts," huffed Nottingham.
"You were fourteen!" exclaimed Henry.
"I know, right!" Neal beamed and high-fived the other Merry Men.
"Dude, why is everyone in my family either being raped or a rapist or both!" moaned Henry dejected. "I am so going to need more therapy!"
"Why would you want shock treatment?" asked Bo Peep.
"I think he means the non-torture kind of therapy," said Jafar.
"Is there really such a thing?"
"Well, that's debatable."
"Never mind," sighed Henry. "Look you may not remember it, but you definitely shagged my mom at least once or I wouldn't exist. Granted, it might have been just the once given how personal she took the whole thing with Michael Tillman banging Ava and Nicholas mom just the one time and then skipping town, but you did live in a car for like... between a couple of weeks up to maybe a year, depending on how old my mom was you met, but either way, at least in Oregon it was probably only misdemeanor sexual abuse of a minor rather than statutory rape, and, to be fair, Oregon state law is seriously fucked up about that. I mean, even if both the guy and the girl are seventeen, they can both be prosecuted or something. Or that's what I read online, anyway."
"That's... all a very interesting story, young man," said Nottingham. "Clearly you are an aspiring con artist trying to avoid child enslavement. I can't blame you. The Blue Fairy runs quite a horrific child trafficking ring."
Henry blinked, shocked. "Wait, the Blue Fairy enslaves kids?" Then he shook his head. "You know, that wouldn't actually surprise me, actually."
"Oh, it's quite true," sighed Neal. "She employed Peter Pan to recruit a whole human division of her cartel to cull children from many different worlds. Fairies are not of the mortal realms, but they require human emotion to keep their own kingdoms from dying. The good fairies use laughter and joy. The bad fairies use tears and fear. And, well, with Snow White's reign of terror upon the Enchanted Forest, there's just not a lot of happy children, and the Blue Fairy is an opportunist who takes her business where the market dictates."
"Of course, Pan is rumored to be dead," piped up Peep. "He overstepped his authority and now the slave trafficking ring's base of operations has relocated from Neverland, presumably, to Camelot. And if there's any place you want to go less than Neverland or Wonderland it's Camelot."
"Yes, it is a silly place," agreed Nottingham. "Also, extremely racist. And the pollen count is just crazy for allergies. Poor Artie, he always did have terrible allergies."
They all nodded at this. Arthur had been imprisoned after being betrayed by his wife and closest knight Lancelot who then killed all the white people. Needless to say, Camelot had a very small population, and white people were terrified to go there, which made it the perfect place for the Blue Fairy to set up her business... and, yes, there was something very wrong about Lancelot enabling the Dwarf and child slave trade considering the historical enslavement of his ancestors who were brought to his world by Snow White's ancestors who overthrew the Duke of the Frontlands, had the Ogres kill Neal's people, and then turned the place into cotton fields for the making of fancy ballgowns and castle linens.
But the people of Camelot chose not to notice any of that, presumably because of the toxic Middlemist flowers that were even worse than Neverland Pixie Dust Vine. If only Arthur hadn't taken a wrong turn on that scouting run and fallen in love with that evil queen...
"That's great," said Henry, growing frustrated with how stupidly these people were written, "but I really am Neal's son and I really do need help."
Before Neal could object again to the crazy story of being this kid's son, a man wearing crazy welding goggles burst into the clearing.
"Merlin's balls, Horrible!" gasped Peep, "you trying to give us a heart attack!?"
"Don't call me that!" Victor Frankenstein growled, "and The Prince is here!"
There was no time to react to that horrible news as Prince James, Robin of Locksley, and a band of very not merry but quite bloodthirsty men poured out from behind the trees to surround the band of thieves.
Neal groaned, "Oh-"
"Farts," concluded Henry.
After a happy slaughtering of East Riverton, James-Who-Was-Really-David and Locksley had a bonus of apprehending Nottingham and the Merry Men. It was a boon to bring the Queen, who was in a fowl mood after having something as embarrassing as an emotional breakdown, something villainous monarchs were not allowed.
Honestly, James-Who-Was-Really-David, was often rather exasperated with his wife's emotionally bipolar moodiness and if he'd realized how unpredictable she could be when they met, he might have avoided falling in love with her. But she was just skinny and mean. It just blinded him to her character flaws, like crying, and murdering blood relatives.
Of course, James-Who-Was-Really-David had also killed his twin brother, but that was different: the douchebag deserved it. Snow White was just a little bit insane with her motivations for murdering family members, even before the whole "Snow Queen" thing.
"I don't want to talk about the Snow Queen thing," Snow huffed, jabbing the meat fork at the taxidermist's swan, which really did showcase the talents of Fantastic Taxidermy Beasts.
"Honeymuffin," sighed James-Who-Was-Really-David at the other end of the ridiculously long table, "we have to talk about it."
"What? I can't hear you."
"I said we have to talk about it."
"No, we don't!"
"I think you have us dine at this absurdly long table just so we can't talk about anything!"
"I think I am going to my room!"
Snow White threw her napkin down and stormed off, demanding the rest of her dinner in bed.
James-Who-Was-Really-David sighed again and rubbed his temples. Her moods had only gotten more volatile since her last pregnancy, which was to be expected, of course, both with the hormones and just being reminded of Emma.
Poor Emma.
She would be walking and talking now, learning to insult servants and jab the kitchen staff with butter knives!
Well, okay, she was walking and talking and doing a lot worse than that, but it wasn't the same. That evil ice witch had taken their baby, magically aged her and brainwashed her and taught her how to inspire fear in the hearts of her enemies - and her subjects.
That was supposed to be their job!
They were supposed to be the ones teaching Emma those things, not being ordered around by their own daughter who didn't know that she was their daughter and believed she was the sister of a complete lunatic who'd encased her own kingdom in a wall of ice.
James-Who-Was-Really-David poked at his roast swan. He really should not have trusted Kristoff. Or that little bitch Anna. But she was just so skinny and mean, helping him murder Bo Peep's family and all for justice! It was all a con, though, a brilliant ruse to infiltrate the Enchanted Forest and turn it into a colony of the Arendelle Empire and usurp any real power play that Snow had by taking their child to ensure they did whatever they were told and sent their collected taxes and food that couldn't grow in Arendelle's inhospitable wasteland across the sea, leaving their people impoverished... and if they ever did revolt, Snow as required to freeze them out of their homes.
Not that there weren't people who needing freezing out of their homes, but his own province, his own mother, had been murdered by Ingrid when they were mostly innocent people who loved him. Of course, the survivors didn't love him, which just created problems. He and Snow could have run a benevolent dictatorship, cleaning up the financial messes and food shortage problems that George, Midas, and the rest had gotten them into, but their grand plans were destroyed the day Emma was taken, and ever since then Snow had been succumbing more and more to the grief and the dark ice magic Ingrid channeled into her through that damned urn.
His wife was, quite simply, going mad.
And there was nothing they could do about it. Sure, they had Rumplestiltskin in their dungeon, but she had Merlin's Apprentice, some old dude who could cross worlds and was the only being the Dark One feared... something they hadn't known at the time they captured Rumplestiltskin in the hopes that he could protect them from Ingrid's crazy prophesy.
He couldn't.
Oh, they'd tried building a wardrobe, but instead of whisking Emma off to another land, Ingrid hijacked it using that wizard's wardrobe, stepped through, grabbed Emma, and went back to her kingdom.
They'd tried to get Emma back. Even hired that also lunatic Mad Hatter to use his hat to get her, but the memory stone they stole that was supposed to cure her of her cursed memories got broken when Anna betrayed them, their wardrobe was burned to ashes, and Emma fled back to Arendelle and her "real family".
Anna paced her dungeon cell while Kristoff slept nearby.
Oh, what fools they'd been! She'd helped Ingrid, believing she just wanted to help find Elsa after her sister ran off and built that crazy ice palace. She'd gone all the way to Misthaven to seek out the Dark One. All she succeeded in doing was helping her aunt discover the weaknesses of her enemies that she manipulated into allies.
All she had wanted was to find some prophesied child, who hadn't even been conceived yet.
As soon she realized the child was Snow White's, Ingrid's beneficence had done a 180. She'd thrown Anna and Kristoff in the dungeon, brainwashed Elsa, and created an ice wall around Arendelle. From there it was a campaign of global conquest with her "sisters".
Anna had managed to escape once and get her back to the Enchanted Forest, but Ingrid had found and tricked Regina's half sister, and using her heart made her shapeshift into various people to trick Snow White and Prince James, including Anna herself.
Really, things had sucked. They'd always sucked.
But then, Anna had never been the upbeat optimistic sort. Really, it was a wonder a guy so clean and neat as Kristoff would be interested in a morose introvert like her!
Also, you know, that he wasn't gay.
The sound of footsteps outside the cell caused Anna turn away from gazing at her sleeping true love like a psycho and prepare for whatever horrible visitor she might have.
The horrible visitor turned out to be "Helga" and Anna glared at her.
"If you've come down here to taunt me again-"
"I've come here to break you out," said Emma.
"Are you that green-skinned witch bitch?" asked Anna, suspicious.
Emma's brows furrowed. "Zelena? She's dead."
"Prove it! Prove you're not Zelena being used by Ingrid to trick me into having a three way with Kristoff and a flying monkey again!"
"Ewe, and I thought sleeping with just Walsh was bad," shuddered Emma, wishing she could memory wipe that image. "Look, I can't prove that I'm not a shapeshifting psychopath, but I can get us out of Arendelle so we can free your sister."
"But my sister is here," reminded Anna.
"No, she isn't. This isn't real," sighed Emma. "I mean, it is here, but none of us are meant to be here like this. The Author, this guy who worked for The Apprentice and went rogue and was trapped in a magical book but somehow got out, probably because my son did something stupid, has now written us all into a fake story. This is basically a cursed play and we're stuck in roles with bad dialogue and worse costuming," she concluded with a gesture at her knockoff Scandinavian garb that included braids and for some reason lederhosen, which were technically Bavaerian.
"That's just the sort of lie Ingrid would have you tell m-"
Anna suddenly collapsed unconscious, knocked out by a wooden clog held by Kristoff.
"She's a sweet girl," he said, "but not very smart. Also, rather moody. But she makes up for it with sluttiness. This one time we were stuck in an ice cave with a reindeer..."
Kristoff trailed off then considered, "Hmm, I see your point about the bad dialogue. So, what's your plan for getting out of here?"
"I hadn't actually gotten that far," admitted Emma.
"Seriously?"
"What can I say? I'm not very smart, but I am moody. Also, according to my uncle, skanky. Don't get any ideas."
"Oh, my heart beats for only one slutty princess! No worries!"
AN: I've always just figured Neal lost his virginity to Tinkerbell. I see Snow and David here like Madalena and Gareth on Galavant. They are terrible people, but not evil people, and probably would have been okay benevolent dictators after they fell in love, if not for the theft of Emma and Snow being corrupted by dark magic. "Arthur" is obviously Farquaad, but in this story Isaac doesn't care and just made him think he was Arthur so there was no original King Arthur (who would have been the evil one here, of course). Anyone get the "Horrible" joke?
Next up: Another prison break.