Disney's Tinker Bell in Storybrooke
A Disney Fairies / Once Upon a Time Crossover
Season 1, Episode 10, Chapter 5
STORYBROOKE, MAINE
Vidia had spent most of the afternoon in her room. She had been humiliated by Tina and Penny. Worst of all, Claire laughed along with them. The flyer felt as if she had been ganged up on. After an hour of sulking or so, she decided not to let them get the better of her. She had been taught how to use the television by Claire and began flipping through different channels looking for something that would entertain her. Eventually Vidia came across a program that caught her attention.
As afternoon turned to evening, Vidia started feeling the emptiness in her stomach and slipped out of her room to eat dinner. From the hallway Vidia heard Claire in her room. She knocked on the door and found that her mother had just finished dressing. "What are you wearing?"
Claire had donned blue jeans, a red and black tartan flannel shirt, boots and some kind of belt with an oversized buckle. On the bed was an absurd looking hat with the sides of the brim curled up. "Oh, hello, dear. I'm sorry again for laughing earlier," Claire said with an easy smile. She then explained to Vidia that Hartley was taking her dancing tonight. They were going to a place called a Honky Tonk where they played country-western music.
"What kind of music?" Vidia asked completely unaware of this genre.
"You would have to hear it to understand," was all Claire could say as a description. Claire then put the hat on her head and asked, "Well? What do you think?"
"Uh? I don't know."
"I'm going for a cowgirl look."
"Is that what they wear?"
"I suppose."
"Then I guess that's it."
The two women descended the stairs and found Tina and Penny hunched over the dining room table giggling and drawing up something. Several papers were crumpled up on the floor and the wastebasket was overflowing.
"What are you girls up to?" Claire asked.
"Oh nothing, Mom," Tina replied.
"Yeah, we were just designing a downhill racer," Penny answered.
Tina glared at Penny. "What are you doing?" she mouthed.
"Trust me," Penny mouthed back.
"A downhill racer?" Claire asked.
"Uh…, yeah," Tina replied tentatively.
"It's to help Tina understand her math homework better," Penny added. Tina had begun the semester in Trigonometry due to a clerical error, a class for which she was not fully prepared. Once the mistake was discovered the girl was moved to Geometry. She was a little behind in that class due to the misplacement. However, Penny had done wonders for helping her grasp the concepts. Tina told Claire that she felt more confident going into the second semester thanks to Penny's help.
This was partly true. Penny had indeed improved Tina's comprehension of the material. Far beyond where she had been before the two met. However, the intent of the downhill racer wasn't for the class, but for a certain older sister. They were going to make up for their earlier humiliation by tormenting her in their own, unique way.
"Oh, that's wonderful, Tina. Is it really helping?"
"Absolutely," Tina replied, an angelic look on her face. Then both Penny and Tina looked at each other and had to stifle laughs so they wouldn't give away their true intentions.
Claire handed Vidia some money and a paper menu. "Honey, you're in charge tonight. This is so you can order pizza for dinner." The two younger girls instantly became excited at the mere mention of the word "pizza."
"What's pizza? And how do I bring it? I can't drive yet."
Tina and Penny were totally dumbstruck that Valerie did not know what pizza was. Claire explained that a store in town would deliver the order. She pointed to the phone number on the menu. "Now, any other questions?"
"Yeah. What's Gonzo?"
"What, dear?"
"What's Gonzo? I was watching this program on television. Kermit is a frog, Miss Piggy is a pig, Fozzie is a bear, but what is Gonzo?"
Instantly the other three knew what she was talking about. The Muppet Show, a half hour variety show that aired in the late 1970's into the 1980's and created by Jim Henson. Claire answered saying that Gonzo was an alien.
"What?! No he's not!" Penny shot back, clearly disturbed that anyone would preach such blasphemy. Penny was one of many fans who openly denounced the sixth film in the series, Muppets From Space, and publically divorced it from official canon. She and others like her preferred the description from The Great Muppet Caper in which Gonzo's airline case was simply labelled "Whatever." They believed, and quite strongly in fact, that this mystery was a large part of Gonzo's charm.
"Oh yes he is!" Tina shot back. Penny was aghast. Her best friend in the whole world, the one person who understood her, who thought as she did, had suddenly turned against her. Horrors. "How else do you explain his oddball behavior, the curved beak nose and his undying love for Camilla the Chicken? He is definitely an alien."
Betrayal! Treason! Turncoat! Tina had committed all these sins in Penny's eyes. Disagreements were aplenty in any friendship, but this! Such departure of opinion on what was clearly a passionate issue for Penny was intolerable.
Suddenly, the giggling, snickering girls burst into arguments and accusations of heresy. Gonzo was most assuredly not alien, Penny confirmed.
Yes he was. Muppets From Space proved it to be true, Tina argued. Penny countered that Muppets From Space was made after the Henson family had lost all control over the property and thus had no place among the finer Muppet movies. Tina responded by saying that the film was produced, released and distributed, therefore it was truth of character.
Claire sighed as this went on and on and on. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," she said, apologizing to Vidia for leaving her with this mess on her first watch. Claire then yanked the menu for the pizza delivery from her hands and gave her the menu for Chinese food delivery in its place. "Trust me, dear, this will go over much easier tonight. Nothing is more divisive than pizza toppings."
Penny raised her voice, Tina responded by raising her voice.
"Maybe." The haggard mother stepped between the two arguing opponents and tried to calm them down. "Girls, girls. You are friends. Each of you shares so much in common with the other. Your love of math, designing race car things, conspiring and surfing the internet to annoy Tina's sister. Now I'm sure you can both agree to disagree over this small matter."
"No!" Tina said sharply.
"Absolutely not!" Penny replied. They each turned their backs to each other.
Seeing this Vidia remembered how Tinker Bell and Periwinkle used to put their wings together and a bright light would erupt revealing them as sisters.
"Oh come now, Tina. Why break up a perfectly good friendship over a movie?" Claire asked her daughter.
Tina just harrumphed and then called Penny a false friend. Penny called Tina a heretic in response and stuck out her tongue at the blonde.
"Now that's enough from both of you," Claire reprimanded them. Just then the doorbell rang indicating Hartley Winter had come calling to take Claire on their date that evening. "You two better make up by the time I get back. Is that clear?"
Neither girl said a word. They each simply glared at the other for a moment before turning away and stomping their feet in disgust.
"Oh now that's it. I'm staying right here until this is resolved," Claire announced.
"No! I can take care of this," Vidia pronounced. "You go on your date with Lord Milori and I'll straighten them out, one way or another."
"Are you sure you can handle them?" Claire asked her.
"Oh, I've dealt with them for a long time," Vidia answered. "This is cupcakes."
"Piece of cake," Claire said, correcting the girl.
"You eat what you like, I'll eat what I like. Now off with you." Vidia started pushing Claire out the door. "Don't worry, don't even think about us, everything will be fine when you get home."
Claire still worried, but the confident tone Vidia projected allowed her to relax enough to leave the young woman in charge. She and Milori went to the Honky Tonk and enjoyed their date while Vidia tried to repair this fracturing friendship. "It's just a stupid puppet!" she hollered.
"MUPPET!" the two girls yelled in unison. Vidia waited for them to say "jinx." It never came.
"Okay, you two, now stop this and I mean now!" Vidia said, metaphorically putting her foot down. Both Tina and Penny shot her the raspberry. Vidia soldiered on. "Tinker Bell, you and Periwinkle are sisters. Born of the same laugh and you each share a bond I'll never know."
Tina looked hurt. "You're my sister, Val" she said. "Don't you remember?"
Finally, progress. "Oh really? Then who put the spider webs in your bath two weeks after you returned from your first visit to the mainland? They tangled up your wings for two whole days."
"Huh?" Tina and Penny stared at each other, perplexed by this strange admission. "Uh, are you talking about the time you put peanut oil in the shampoo bottle?" The little blonde explained to Penny that it took a week of bathing just to get the oily residue out of her hair and scalp. And she smelled like peanuts for a month afterwards. One of her schoolmates even had an allergic reaction to it. Tina had never seen a face swell up so much in her life. The poor boy looked like a small body with a giant, hairy peach for a head.
"Never mind. Okay, I can prove it." Vidia instructed them to stand back to back. Since they were already facing away from each other they pretty much already were. "No, I mean stand right up against each other." Tina and Penny shot Vidia confused looks. Vidia explained the meaning of the gesture and the secret of the wings.
"We don't have wings," Tina protested.
"Yeah. You me to press against her?" Penny asked seeking clarification.
"With my butt rubbing against hers?" Tina continued.
"EWWW!" they both said. "What a weirdo."
"Yeah, it's like she's some kind of alien," Penny derided.
"Kind of like Gonzo is an alien," Tina added. And so began to the second half of the argument over Gonzo's status as an alien or not an alien. Vidia sighed, all that work for nothing. She tried gamely to regain control of the situation but the arguing escalated onto yelling and then to screaming and finally to hurtful comments that ended when Penny yelled, "You are so mean. I never want to see you ever again!" right before she ran out the door crying. Tina screamed her head off in disgust as she ran up the stairs and slammed the door to her room in a fit of anger.
Vidia just groaned. She slumped into a dining room chair and plopped her head on the table. "Ow!" she commented, her nose having broken the fall.
How had their friendship collapsed so easily? They were sisters. Claire did mention that sisters did annoy each other here in the human world. Perhaps being humans and under this curse Tink and Peri were acting more like humans than themselves. Given a little time they might come to realize just how foolish they were acting. And if that didn't work there was always shoving them together to make her point about their wings.
The exasperated fast flyer opened her eyelids. Her face was lying directly on the Chinese Food menu for delivery. She read the menu item directly in front of the bridge of her nose.
"Moo Goo Gai Pan? What the heck is that?"
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Your feedback is always appreciated.