Pascal pointed one red foot at the largest window as he stared at Rapunzel with a sly look. The window in question that Rapunzel would throw her hair out of and pull Mother Gothel up through.
Rapunzel glanced from the little red foot to the window. She sat up. Why red? She thought, as she got up off the bed.
"Mother can't be back already..." Rapunzel said to no one in particular. Her bare feet made no sound as she padded across the floor to the window. She eyed Pascal with a wary look. She got over to the window just in time to hear a soft scuffle and a flash of something.
She gasped and spun, her back slammed against the wall, where unbenounced to Rapunzel, had a Mandalarian on the other side.
Rapunzel gave Pascal a wide-eyed look. "Did you see that?" She whispered.
She didn't really know what she saw, just a flash of metal and movement. Her mind flashed to her mother's recent recitation about roughens, criminals, and men with sharp jagged teeth.
A shadow briefly blotted out a fraction of the light streaming through the windows.
Rapunzel lunged across the room and snatched the cast iron pan off the stove. Her heart thundered against her chest. Her breast heaved up and down. It was strange. She felt terror, but also an undercurrent of excitment. It caused her body to tremble and a feeling she couldn't describe built in her stomach.
She, surprisingly, almost wanted to smile. Nothing had made her feel like that before. But she already knew she wanted to experence it again. Just maybe without the mindnumbing terror.
Pan in hand, Rapunzel moved back to the window and plastered herself, back first, to the wall next to it. The pan clinched against her chest with both hand around the handle. Soft thumps and a blocking of the sun announced something or someone's presence. Rapunzel looked to the side and saw a towering figure. Metal covered the humanoid frame head to toe, broken up with fabic or leather. She had no idea what it was. It didn't seem human, but maybe all that metal was a mask? A vague memory of a character from one of her books came to mind, but she couldn't remember why...
Mando immedietely turned toward the only other person in the room. He didn't know what he expected, but a startled woman with big green eyes clutching a cooking pan didn't even make the list.
Rapunzel reacted on pure panic and impulse. Her arms came up and swung with all the force her terror could muster.
He caught the pan with one gloved hand. Mando clinched his free hand with a grimace. He couldn't fully react. The hand injury made that appendage difficult to use and after the climb, he's uncertain how much force it could take.
Rapunzel saw her own stunned reflection in the glimmering metal. She squeaked. Her hair laid all over the floor in thick ropes and, she noticed, under the person/thing's boot. In a instant, she looped her hair around his ankle and pulled.
Mando hit the floor hard, flat on his back. Rapunzel got jerked down on top of him as neither had let go of the pan. He pulled up his other arm only to be restricted by something blond, long, and thick. He stared at it and stared a second longer. "Is this hair?" He blurted out. His voice colored with disbelief.
"You can't have it." Rapunzel snapped. All of Mother's warnings suddenly flooded her head. "Pascel!"
Mando only got a glance of the large room before something solid and green attached to his helmet, blacking out his vision.
He grunted and lashed out with the hand that had held a pan, only to find it empty with the same hair wrapped around his wrist. A sliver of sight showed his body and the floor. He, absently, also noticed it tangled around his torso and waist.
Rapunzel scrambled off up to her bare feet. A light blush flushed over her face and neck as she crawled off him. She snatched up her pan with one hand and pulled on her hair with the other. It tightened around him. She formed one more loop to pull around his ankles and finished it off by anchoring the end of her hair around the nearest support post.
In the chaos, Mando got one arm free, but not in time to stop Rapunzel from kicking away his vibroblades, snagging his blaster, and yanking his rifle off his back. She was quick, he'd give her that.
Rapunzel raced to dump the blaster and vibroblades in a clay pot and stashed the rifle in her wardrobe.
Mando snatched at whatever was attached to his helmet. Startled to feel it give under his grip, even more startled to see an amphibian type creature in his hand. He shook off the strangeness of, well, everything so far today. His eyes snapped to the woman.
Rapunzel stood in the middle of the room. Her chest heaved. Blond hair ruffled and scattered everywhere. Literally, everywhere.
Mando's eyes flickered from her, to the hair on the floor, and the hair on him. He took in the room with a practiced glance. Some type of studio, he noted absently. A bed, kitchen, living area, with stairs off to the side. And hair all over the place. In an uncommon lack of restraint, he blurted out "Is this your hair?"
Rapunzel had a sudden flash of thought that Mother could've been right the whole time. People wanted her hair. Her vivid green eyes narrowed on her intruder.
"Is that what you're after? Who are you? Who else knows my location? What do you want with my hair? To cut it? Sell it?" She demanded. She paced in front of him, her pan pointed at him through her rambling questions. Mother thought she wouldn't be able to handle anything out there. The intruder tied up to the post proved different, she thought.
"What?" Mando said. He pulled again against the hair around him. "I don't want your hair. I want out of your hair, literally."
Rapunzel pointed at him with her pan. "I don't know what you are, but you're gonna do what I say and answer my questions if you want your weap-" Rapunzel paused as what he said sunk in. She dropped the pan to her side and gave him a puzzled look. "You don't want my hair?"
Mando shook his head. "No. I found you and this tower by accident."
Rapunzel reassessed. Her eyes flickered to the painting of the floating lights. She did need a guide if she planned to leave... Okay. Change of plans. She needed leverage to get him to help. "You still will never find your weapons without me."
She put her hands on her hips. Partly faking on her knowledge. She didn't know for sure the things she hid were weapons, they seemed like it, like the things she read about on her datapad. It's why she took them from him in the first place. There was one story about pirates...
Mando stared at her for a second, then looked around. His head angled toward the pot nearby. "It's in the pot, isn't it?"
Rapunzel's hands fell to her side in shock. How did he know? She gasped. She swung the pan at him again and, yet again, acting before thinking. That time the pan met it's mark with the ringing clank of metal on metal.
Mando swore as the vibrations from the impact rattled him for a moment. It didn't hurt, but she had a surprisingly good arm. He could hear her moving around, he assumed rehiding his weapons.
His lips twitched in unconscious amusement. The strange woman was so far removed from anyone he's met.
Rapunzel hid the blaster and blades in the false side of the bottom stair. She shot to her feet and nudged the wood panel back in place with the heel of her foot.
Unknown to her, Mando looked on in amusement. He didn't see where she put his weapons, but she never thought to move away from the spot she was messing with. He could probably take another guess if he wanted a pan to the head, again.
Rapunzel stepped back in front of Mando. "Now you will never find it without me." She pronounced.
Her thoughts raced. She didn't know what to do now. Her datapad never said what to do when a roughen/person/thing goes through your window for your hair, but maybe not for your hair?
Rapunzel squinted at him. His head reminded her of something from one of her stories.
A story of knights and a princess. Knights! She pointed at his head. Slightly hopping on her toes. "Oh! That's not your head, it's a helmet." She grinned, only for it to fade right after as she felt a bit stupid. Of course, he would know he's wearing a helmet. He probably didn't need her to say that.
Mando just stared. Again. He would admit that nothing in his life had prepared him for the situation he found himself in. Tangled up in a young woman's very long hair with a green animal glaring at him as she brandished a cooking pan.