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Tangled: Between the Kisses

Act Three: Journey Towards Destiny

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Vigor the Visionary

Rapunzel and Eugene meet Vigor the Visionary…

Written by @tangledbea and @the-writer1988

Read on AO3

Ficlet inspired by this ask from @antiquepearlss

Flynn's boots skidded to a stop on the grass and he gazed up in horror at the towering rocks that prevented any forward progress for him and Lance. It was too tall and smooth to easily scale - the nearest handhold was a good two thirds of the way up. He could hear his best friend panting for breath behind him as he considered their next move. He was, after all, the brains between them.

"Dead end! Great job!" Lance joked as he gulped air.

"Yeah, ha ha," Flynn deadpanned. "Okay, here's the plan, you give me a boost, then I'll find a tree or rock or something to anchor a rope to and pull you up after me, just like in Equis."

"Gotcha."

Lance braced his back against the rock face and cupped his hands to give Flynn a leg-up. Flynn made sure his precious crown-holding satchel was secured before putting his foot in his friend's hands and waited for the lift. Like a well-oiled machine, Lance straightened, tossing Flynn like a caber significantly higher than he'd have gotten even standing on Lance's shoulders. At that hover point at the top of the parabola, in the moments before he started his descent, Flynn grabbed a protruding tree root with one hand and grasped a jutting rock with the other. His boots slid against stone until they found purchase, and just like that, he was most of the way up the wall.

As soon as he reached the top, he began looking for somewhere to secure a rope, but the whinnies of horses and the shouts of guards grabbed his attention, instead. Quickly, he looked back down into the short gorge to see how Lance was doing.

"Any minute now, buddy, they're right on our tails!" Lance pointed out urgently.

Shit. Flynn peered through the trees and thought he saw flashes of red and white as the guards closed in. Time to pivot.

"New plan, Lance!" he called down. "Get the hell out of there. We'll meet up at the Snuggly Duckling later, got it?"

"Got it!" Lance answered, and was sprinting from the dead end and diving into the brush. Flynn only hoped he'd be able to get away, but he didn't have a lot of time to think about that right now. He had his own tracks to make. A crossbow bolt barely missed his ear, and he took off at a sprint. Fuck, the guard had split up to catch them both!

Keep your head down, Lance, he silently hoped, then put all of his focus into evading the guard and finding some place to hide.

~*~*~

So, yeah, I almost immediately realized that they could plan to meet up at the Snuggly Duckling, but circumstances make it so that Eugene leaves with Rapunzel before Lance is able to get to them, thus opening Lance up to wondering what Flynn's game plan is.

This is from the first scenario, by the way.

Oh my god, this is such a good question! It immediately set my mind awhirl with possibilities! It couldn't have come at a better time, because I just finished editing the next chapter of BtK last night, and my head's in the Eugene and Lance feels!

Okay, so, first, would this mean that Eugene would double-cross Lance and take the satchel/crown for himself? Or would he be a good friend and help Lance out of that dead end?

In the first scenario, I see it falling back to "No Time Like the Past" rules, where if you fall behind, you get left behind. Lance would understand this, at least on the surface. But the stakes would be much higher, since theft of the crown was a much bigger deal. Also, if Eugene and Lance were still partners, the bounty on Lance's head would match Eugene's. I don't think Lance would give himself up to the guards without a fight, but I don't think he'd want revenge on Eugene, either. This may lead to a second act reunion, at the campsite, rather than Gothel joining forces with him. I can see Lance showing back up as a third wheel after Rapunzel and Eugene's talk about his past and why she stays in the tower, etc. In other words, they just opened up to each other, got vulnerable with each other, she showed him her magic hair, then here comes Lance, putting a jovial divider between them.

Oh! Oh! Okay, so what if Gothel doesn't recruit Lance, but she does tell him about the girl with the magic hair, and then sends him to the campsite with his own assumptions about what's going on? So now Lance thinks this is a ploy to keep Rapunzel chill until it's time to take/use the hair or whatever else. He thinks Flynn is still working a ruse and doesn't realize he's falling for Rapunzel and becoming more and more Eugene as time goes on. He might feel put out if he thought Flynn was trying to keep the big prize for himself, especially after also taking the crown. And if Eugene starts to explain the situation, Lance would think it's the long game to get the satchel back, and Eugene wouldn't yet have the strength of character to admit that he was falling and was starting to reconsider being a thief.

So now we've got Lance third wheeling it and Eugene trying not to show how much he likes Rapunzel while they're in the kingdom. (Bonus: that's twice the wanted thieves in the party now, while Punz is just trying to have a good time on her birthday!) We get to just before "I See the Light", and wouldn't you know it, the only boat left would be cramped if all three of them took it out! Lance, can you please stay here or take another boat or something? Again, Lance suspects that Flynn intends to make off with the crown without him for a second time, because they made no plans to meet up after this whole charade is over, and he's getting really irritated. Instead of enjoying the lights, he makes his way to the far bank, signals Eugene with the lantern, etc. Now when Eugene goes over there, he and Lance argue about the next step in the game. Think Miguel and Tulio towards the climax of Road to El Dorado. Eugene is just like, "Fine! Take the crown! I don't even want it anymore!" And Lance is like, "You mean you don't want to be partners anymore. You think I'm blind? You think I can't tell what's going on with you and the girl Eugene?" I don't think they'd get into an actual fistfight over this, but here comes Gothel with the steel chair a tree branch and knocks them both out, trusses them up and sends them back to the kingdom in a dinghy, then goes back to Rapunzel and shows her how, in the end, Flynn chose his life of crime over her.

In prison, Eugene and Lance are able to have a real heart-to-heart, clearing the air between them. Lance is able to see that Eugene was never out to betray him, and that he just wants a new life, a clean slate, with Rapunzel. He talks about the old lady who told him about her hair, and Eugene puts two and two together. Now it's Eugene and Lance who get broken out of prison by the Pub Thugs, but Lance stays with the Thugs to hold off the guards, urging Eugene to go save Rapunzel. Climax of the movie is the same as it is in canon.

For the second scenario, this means that Lance would be third wheeling it from the very start! They'd both find and climb the tower, Rapunzel would knock them both out and hide them both and interrogate them both. Lance and Flynn would be on the same page at the start, just trying to get the satchel/crown back from the girl, who is being a royal pain in the tuchus about this whole thing. But the thing is, with a second friendly presence who's also influencing Eugene the whole time, there's a lot less wiggle room for romance. I think there'd have to be some notable changes in order to keep New Dream on track in this version. It's hard to brew romance unless you can get the intended couple alone. I guess I'm saying it would need to be more like El Dorado in this version, where the (previously) Eugene perspective is now turned into a buddy flick, and that would need to be harmonious with Rapunzel's POV. Good for her that she makes two friends, but the impact of that means that she and Eugene are less likely to find time to fall.

Ooh, perhaps Lance doesn't get stuck in the cave with them, though? Yeah! Rapunzel and Eugene get stuck in the cave, Lance does not, they all get separated. Now Rapunzel and Eugene can have their opening up to each other stuff, Gothel can still set the suggestion to Lance that Eugene's trying to get Rapunzel's magical hair for herself, and we can pick up from the campsite scene in the first scenario! Yeah! But now, Lance is aware of the chemistry between Eugene and Rapunzel, and he's a bit more... reserved in the kingdom. Now he's playing the long game, waiting for the opportune moment to confront Flynn about Rapunzel and the crown and the hair and all that stuff. They fight after "I See the Light," continue on as in first scenario!

And this, my friends, has been a stream-of-consciousness brainstorming session by Bex!

So long as it was used to inform their behavior, then it's definitely canon and not just "something that Alex said that doesn't actually affect the series at all."

Not that Alex Hirsch tends to do things by halves. If he's got a story element, then it's relevant to the plot.

Okay. That must have been tough to go home to. Of course, if their parents were at all kind, the kids already knew it was happening.

All of it, multiple times, the most recent time being last month.

The thing is, I don't think TTS would have ever had an episode with a one-to-one parallel with any of our holidays. After all, their Valentine's Day episode (which aired in August) was about The Day of Hearts, not Valentine's Day, which doesn't exist in the Tangled universe. So I don't think a Halloween episode would have been about Halloween.

People like to say that "The Wrath of Ruthless Ruth" doesn't count, because it's not actually Halloween, but the elements are all there: it aired in October, a dark and stormy night, autumnal iconography like pumpkins and grey skies, poltergeist activity, possession, being trapped in a location, the characters feeling terror and panic, a corporeal ghost... I'm not sure why it doesn't count to so many people when none of our holidays are represented as we literally celebrate them in the entire series.

I literally am @lokoteibex (that's my art blog), so you already have my answer. XD

LokoteiBex. I only have one fic with smut in it posted, and it's not a first-time smut fic (it's only in the epilogue chapter). The writing I've done in that regard has been in roleplay format, not in fanfic format. My RPs don't, for the most part, get posted on AO3. (Except that one fic with the smut chapter. XD That was an RP.)

I'm not sure where this ask is coming from. lol Not only do I have tons of ideas what it might have been like, I've written it myself, and I post all my fics on AO3, so I am well aware of it.