Chapter Eight: The Snow Queen of Hoth
Hera knew the bond between a starship and its captain was
strong, and none was stronger than that she shared with Ghost. After the first grueling night on the ice planet, which saw
everyone huddling together for warmth (a gesture Ezra took pleasure in when it
came to huddling with Sabine), she took another shot at getting the ship’s
power back, with help from Chopper. The work was long and excruciating, but the
two managed after some time to get it done.
She afterward breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank the
Force.”
Chopper whistled and grunted in agreement with that
sentiment.
Ghost’s heating
unit instantly wiped out the freezing temperatures seeped into its
interior overnight. Just outside the cockpit, Hera and Chopper could hear the
others celebrate at their success.
Missing from the celebratory crowd were Adrienne and
Vanessa, who yet to return from their suicidal journey into Hoth’s harsh
climate. This left the crew with a difficult choice that they discussed
together in the cargo hold.
“No denyin’ those two perished out there by now.” Zeb supposed.
“I say we take off now while we’ve still got power runnin’ through the ship.”
“I’m with Zeb on that.” Sabine acknowledged. “They both
knew the danger they put themselves into. There’s no point in us suffering the
same fate.”
“We can’t just leave them, especially not Adrienne. She’s
been part of this crew for a very long time and has got us out of more scrapes
than I can think of.” Hera argued. “No. We should wait just a little longer.”
Penz, who sat lotus-style beside Chrissy on one crate big
enough to suit them both, expressed her opinion whilst in meditation: “I can
still sense their presences on this planet. They are alive and well. And we’d
be well to give them more time.”
Her mystic perception became a point of interest with
Kanan, who only knew of Jedi to be capable of such a trait.
“Kanan?” He heard Hera quietly beckon him. “May I have a
word with you?”
Hearing the register in her voice at the request, Kanan
worried there might have been more
trouble that needed to be dealt with. He followed her to his quarters, which
was the most private place for them to talk.
He was the first to address: “What’s up?”
“I found out a little something about our supposed
‘accident’ that landed us on this ice bucket. There was a miscalculation in the
trajectory of our hyperspace travel. Hoth is far out of the way of Lothal, which is where I had the coordinates
set to take us.”
“But this planet is
located in the Outer Rim, just as Lothal is, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, except it’s incredibly far from the system. This sector is so remote that not even the
Empire has been near it.”
(Star Wars Note: A "star system" is defined as a group of celestial bodies, usually planets, orbiting a star. Most stars in the Star Wars galaxy had their own planetary system. During the crisis that gave birth to the Clone Wars, several hundred systems that belonged to the Galactic Republic seceded and formed the Confederacy of Independent Systems under the leadership of Count Dooku.)
Kanan considered Hera’s claims with great suspicion.
Bridging them with the strange occurrence that brought their crew to Hoth in
the first place, including the two peculiar characters they picked up from
their raid on the Death Star, there was only one plausible hypothesis to make…
“Someone’s going out of their way to sabotage our ship.
Maybe to get them to their initial destination.”
“And wherever that may be, is it Imperial-affiliated?”
Hera cautiously questioned.
------------------------
As comfortable as the ship became with the heat returned, Ezra still felt the urge to step out, stretch his legs, and breathe in
some fresh air – which Zeb robbed of him, constantly stinking up the place.
Rather than risk bringing all the cold air back in through exiting via the rear
ramp, he opted to go out by the top hatch of the ship. He regarded himself
thankful that it was located on the side not buried deep
in snow. In fact, he counted on Kanan requesting in his assistance of getting Ghost out sometime very soon.
In the meantime, he just enjoyed the breathtaking view of
the vast snowy landscape with the morning sun shining bright on the horizon. It
completely took his mind off the cold, which was not nearly as unbearable in
the daytime. Since his time with the Ghost
crew, he only visited less than a handful of planets. Lothal, as long as he lived there, was the only one he was strongly acquainted with.
But Hoth was something special. The atmosphere was
so peaceful. And all of the snow – something Ezra never dreamed of seeing
his whole life – was everywhere as far as the eye could see. Crazy
as it seemed, crashing on this planet was the best thing that happened to
him in the last few days – next to getting to hug Sabine the other night, even
if it was just to exhume body heat.
Ezra’s moment of serenity was curtly disrupted by the
sudden emergence of a peculiar model airspeeder that swooped right by his field
of vision. The suddenness of its appearance took his breath away, not having
expected any other ships, or inhabitants for that matter, to have occupied the
empty space of the planet. In the quick moment he watched it fly by, Ezra could have sworn he had seen a variation of the Starbird –
Sabine’s call sign – etched in on the hull.
(Star Wars Note: The "Starbird" is a stylized depiction of a bird rising up in the air, with its wings spread and its head turned to the right. This design is based on the starbird of ancient legend, which stated that it could never die and, if it seemed to be gone, it was actually renewing itself in the heart of a nova. The Rebel Alliance uses a similar starbird design for their symbol, though the connection between the two emblems have yet to be confirmed as canon.)
“What the…?”
------------------------
Elsa’s ice palace was a true visual wonder and even
bigger than either Vanessa or Natalie imagined it to be. Olaf did his noble
deed and led them straight to it; of course, it could have been by
accident, as the living snowman just happened on the flawless staircase part
of the exterior design. The icy structure of the palace was so majestic it made
even Kristoff overly emotional.
“I’m gonna cry.” He admitted outright.
“Go ahead. I won’t judge.” An equally awe-stricken Anna
permitted.
While Anna, Vanessa, Natalie, and Olaf – who was most
eager of all to go inside the palace, the first one rushing ahead – were
able to make it up the stairs, Sven had great difficulty, his big
hooves slipping and sliding across the first few. As a result, the reindeer was
forced to stay behind while his human companion joined with the others.
Once at the main entrance doors, Anna – after a moment of
hesitation and constant urging from Olaf – brought herself to knock. It only
took three hits before the doors opened on their own, almost automatically.
Anna was delightfully surprised of how easy it was. “It
opened! That’s a first.” In sudden realization, she turned to the group and
said, “You all should probably wait out here – especially you, Kristoff.”
“What?” He uttered in disbelief.
“The last time I introduced her to a guy, she froze
everything.”
“B-B-But…Oh, come on! It’s a palace made of ice! Ice is
my life!”
“It’ll be just for a minute.”
Vanessa discouragingly sighed. “As much as I’d be happy
to oblige to that, Anna, there’s a bit of an urgency issue we’ve got here to
the real problem at hand.”
“And by that, you mean what you said about this not being
Arendelle.” Anna scoffed. “I still don’t see how you can say that when Elsa and
her palace are standing right here in
front of us.”
(Disney Note: This isn't the first time the Frozen characters have been literally out of their element. The first half of Season Three of Once Upon a Time focused on Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff as they journeyed from Arendelle in the Enchanted Forest to the real world of Storybrooke. In the live-action drama series on ABC, Elsa was portrayed by Australian actress Georgina Haig, while Anna and Kristoff were played by Elizabeth Lail and Scott Michael Foster respectively.)
“I’m only saying that—”
Vanessa stopped once she and everyone else detected loud
groaning that echoed throughout the area. At first, she feared it might have
been the one-armed wampa again, having followed their scent. But when she heard
murmuring with the groans, her focus shifted to the bottom of the staircase
where Sven obediently waited, seeing Adrienne regaining consciousness on the
noble reindeer’s back.
“Oh, crap.” Vanessa whispered, carefully rushing back
down the stairs.
Anna took advantage of the distraction and went right
inside the palace.
“One…two…three…four…” Olaf softly counted, following
Anna’s promise of “a minute” to pass for waiting. Kristoff, in his despair of
being unable to witness the inside of the ice
palace, counted with him.
Meanwhile, Vanessa approached the awakening Adrienne,
whose body continued to droop uncomfortably over Sven’s back. Painfully lifting
her upper body with a stream of drool escaping the left corner of her mouth,
she gazed up at Vanessa and groggily asked, “What the hell happened? Why does
my face and head hurt?”
Vanessa fidgeted with her hands, fighting the courage to
confess the truth. “I…uh…I punched you.” She then hurriedly added, “I’m sorry.”
From her sideways position, Adrienne glared at the tall
redhead. “Consider your apology unaccepted ‘til after the scheduled meeting.”
“What meeting?”
“The one between my foot and your butt.”
She wiggled herself off Sven, toppling embarrassingly
head-first into the snow. As soon as she got herself together and was able to
stand upright again, she discovered Elsa’s ice palace towering majestically near them. Without pause, she staggered right up the staircase, forcing
Vanessa to chase after her while pleading to stop. Both women breezed right
by Olaf, Kristoff, and Natalie on their way in.
“Hey! I haven’t finished counting to sixty yet!” Olaf protested
before he, Kristoff, and Natalie followed suit.
The entire group entered the first room of the
palace – a widely-spaced area with two curving staircases along the sides that
joined together on a platform above and across from the entrance – as the
conversation in progress between Anna and Elsa was interposed.
“Hi! I’m Olaf, and I like warm—”
“SHUT UP!” Adrienne snapped at the lively snowman, who
didn’t seem so much after her harsh command. Soon after Olaf was silenced,
Adrienne centered her attention on the owner and creator of the palace: “Elsa, listen to me. Your presence in this world poses extreme danger to it.”
“Yes, I know.” Elsa remarked.
Her understanding caught Adrienne by surprise. “You do?”
“Yes. That’s why I came all this way, as far away from
the kingdom as possible. I’m a danger to everyone, including all of you. None
of you should be here right now.” Elsa frowned at the strangers that her sister
brought with her. “Who are all of you?”
“My name is Adrienne. I come from another realm, one that
yours found its way in.”
The room fell silent for a brief moment until Olaf voiced
his observation of it: “Everybody’s still talking, right? Or did I just go
deaf?”
“Did you really just say that we’re in another realm? As
in another world?” Anna queried, her disbelief evident from her tone.
“What you’re saying, it’s…it’s insane.” Elsa added.
Adrienne sighed in annoyance, expecting this. “In the
last hour I was out, thanks to a certain redhead I intend on killing later, has
anyone seen anything out of the ordinary? Anything that’d jumped out at them?
Maybe literally?”
Kristoff was the only one bold enough to reply: “Well,
there was that huge scary snowman and those giant metal elephants we saw on the
way here.”
Elsa’s eyes grew wide at Kristoff’s mentioning of the
latter oddity. “You saw them, too? I thought they were sent after me. That’s why I created Marshmallow –
to fight them off, so I could escape. What on earth were they?”
“Imperial AT-AT walkers.” Adrienne divulged. “If the
Empire’s found you, Elsa, then it’s a safe bet that your presence here has
already stirred a hornet’s nest, making your departure from here mandatory. It’ll be just a matter of
time before they find this place and tear it down, along with you!”
Her warnings perplexed the young, terrified Snow Queen.
“All I want is to be left alone. Please. Just…”
BOOM!
A massive tremor resounded through the palace, knocking
everyone off balance.
“What was that?”
Kristoff exclaimed. He then heard the cries of a panicked reindeer outside the
palace and became alarmed. “Sven!”
Kristoff rushed outside. Vanessa followed him to the foot
of the staircase, looking ahead to see what brought on the ensuing chaos. Her
heart skipped a beat when she discovered the same Imperial forces she,
Kristoff, Anna, Sven, and Natalie spotted earlier, firing their laser cannons
directly at the palace and marching from a close distance. Massive chunks of
the icy structure exploded from the laser fire, raining down all around.
(Authorial Note: If Star Wars fans make connection in the earlier appearance of the airspeeder and the AT-AT walkers, they will notice these scenes happen in parallel with the Battle of Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back.)
“They’ve found us!” Vanessa informed the others, who
joined her, Kristoff, and Sven to see the attacking walkers.
“Oh, man!” Natalie nervously cried. “Things just got from
bad to worse!”
Adrienne’s heart raced with intensity. “There’s only one
way out of this. Everyone stand close by me and—”
“ELSA!” Anna screamed, cutting Adrienne’s direction short
once she brought everyone’s attention to what she witnessed: her sister
bravely rushing away from the group. “What are you doing? Come back!”
Unfortunately, Elsa chose not to oblige to Anna’s command, continuing on
her path towards the Imperial walkers.
The hasty action of the Snow Queen impelled Adrienne to
pursue her. Whether or not it was to stop her in the madcap crusade against
colossal machines of mass destruction that she could not even begin to
comprehend, she was not entirely sure. All she knew was how imperative it was
that Elsa survived.
It was the same drive that urged Vanessa to join in with
her, but not after she stopped to provide Natalie with crucial instruction:
“Get yourself and these others back to Ghost.”
It was the only command she left her with before catching up to Adrienne and
Elsa at breakneck speed.
Natalie panicked. “Vanessa! Wait! I
can’t…” The determined redhead was well out of earshot by then.
“We have to get Elsa back!” Anna frantically said. “We
can’t leave her with those…those…things!”
“Calm down.” Natalie beckoned, more to herself than to
Anna. “Vanessa and Adrienne will keep her safe, I promise. Let’s just get
ourselves somewhere other than here.”
She commenced in focusing very hard on channeling her
power. Not since the incident back in the Muppetverse had she felt comfortable
with using any of her abilities. She thought that she – and her “other half” –
had them under control. But something disrupted her concentration. It might
have been the flux of emotions that bounced between her and Sean Thomas when
they were finally reunited with his beloved wife, Christina, or it might have
been something else entirely.
Natalie only knew she had a second chance to get it right.
The moment she suspected there was definite control
within her, she triggered the spell. Within a second, she and the few characters around her vanished
right out of thin air.
------------------------
Conceal, don’t
feel.
Words Elsa was trained by her parents to
understand in association with controlling her powers. Most of her life spent locked away in her room, concealing and not feeling. But now, with all of
Arendelle knowing about what she can do, she decided to let go.
(Disney Note: If you read closely, you can spot some of the lyrics to "Let It Go" integrated into this paragraph.)
These strange machines – these “Imperial walkers,” as
Adrienne referred them – were something Elsa could unleash on without the fear
of harming whatever was inside. She was not absolutely certain if there was anything living inside. The inner
workings of these mechanical beasts were a mystery to her.
(Star Wars Note: AT-AT walkers are in fact piloted from a cockpit located within its "head." The crew was made up of an AT-AT commander behind two AT-AT drivers who controlled the walker's movements.)
All she knew was that they had to be stopped.
The barrage of laser fire brought down on her furiously
sprinting form was counteracted by a seven-foot wall of ice she reflectively
conjured up to shield herself. Regrettably for Elsa, the wall was not strong
enough to deflect the laser fire, shattering the instant the walkers blasted
upon it.
The backfire of her defensive maneuver left Elsa stunned,
knocking her down hard to the snow. Battered and weakened, she fought to get
herself up but had zero success. Meanwhile, the walkers grew dangerously closer,
with the lead on the verge of stomping her to death by its right fore foot.
A sudden barbaric howl echoed over the battlefield,
distracting the walkers from their attempted execution of Elsa.
Soaring thirty feet across the air at ludicrous speed, her
lightsabers drawn, Adrienne made her presence known in time to save the Snow
Queen. She flew in right towards the head of the lead walker, hurling both sabers
in its direction. They flew like boomerangs made of light, connecting with the
neck of the walker and detaching the head from its body. It crashed to the
ground in a fiery paroxysm while its body proceeded in exploding apart from the
inside.
(Star Wars Note: The armor plating of the AT-AT walkers is impervious to blasters, while the neck and joints proved to be weak spots and could be damaged by blaster cannons and other heavy weaponry.)
In the midst of Adrienne’s rampage, Vanessa
transcendentally manifested right beside Elsa, carrying the Snow Queen away
before any pieces of the destroyed walker could rain down over her.
Immediately following their departure, Adrienne landed back
on the ground just as her sabers returned perfectly to her hands. The other two
walkers fired on her, yet she managed to flawlessly deflect every single blast
with the twirl of her sabers. In a twisted sense, this was the most fun she had
for quite some time.
A safe distance away, Vanessa slid to a
halt across the icy ground and set down Elsa’s half-conscious body. Looking
back, she noted the intense, one-sided clash between Adrienne and the remaining
walkers. It did not seem like a fair fight, regardless of the magnificent
fighting power Adrienne possessed.
Briefly turning to Elsa, Vanessa promised, “I’ll be right
back, Your Majesty. You just rest here.”
Moving at the same swift pace she had previously, Vanessa made
her heading for the battlefield. That was until the sudden emergence of a
darkly clad figure materialized directly in her path, standing out from the
vast whiteness around it. Again, Vanessa’s feet
skidded over the ice and snow, forming a mound of it before she stopped just a
foot away from the familiar woman that barred her way.
“Yve Ette.” She whispered, staring right into her eyes,
brandishing a sinister reddish-orange glow inside the pupils.
(Character Note: "Yve Ette" returns in this story after her literally painful defeat at the hands of Genevieve in Marvel Mayhem. Before her presence in the Marvel Universe, she previously visited the Star Wars universe to train under Darth Vader in the ways of the Dark Side, which earned her a Sith lightsaber that was reconstructed with Skrull technology to develop a specialized saber that "kills" Guardians.)
“You’re new.” The corrupted reincarnation said in a
hollowed voice. “I can sense his
spirit in you, but I don’t recall having ever been you or having yet to be you.”
Vanessa stood speechless, struck by fear.
Without a hint of caution, Yve Ette reached forward with
one hand in blinking-quick motion and gripped Vanessa’s throat tight while using
her other to ignite a lightsaber of her own – one with a black hilt and a
blade that appeared to be made of fire and lightning.
“This is special-made for annihilating Guardians.” She
said of the weapon. “And I’m going to kill you with it.”
Vanessa’s heart pounded right through her chest. She
could barely breathe from the panic overwhelming her.
“I know what
you are – and I cannot allow you to continue existing, knowing what it means to
my plans.” Yve Ette threatened.
“Please…don’t…kill me.” Vanessa pleaded in her struggle
to speak.
Yve Ette smirked. “Begging for your life? I would’ve
expected more from a—ACK!”
Two lightsaber blades protruded from Yve Ette’s chest,
nearly connecting with Vanessa’s. Yve Ette impulsively released her hold on
Vanessa’s neck. The tall redhead recovered, returning air to her lungs, as she
looked around Yve Ette to notice her rescuer to be Adrienne, impaling her
sabers through Yve Ette’s body. In the distance, the remaining two walkers were decimated, courtesy of Adrienne’s victory, massive pillars of
black smoke rising from their ravaged steel carcasses.
Adrienne removed her sabers out of Yve Ette, letting her
body collapse to the snow and her saber to extinguish and fall just as
lifelessly from her hand.
Witnessing the action whilst rubbing her throat, Vanessa
hoarsely noted, “You killed her.”
“No. I just gave her a flesh wound. She can’t be killed
by play toys like these. It’s gonna take something a lot stronger.”
“Are you sure?”
“We aren’t scattered in ashes all over this snow, are we?”
Vanessa was merely half-assured, gazing on Yve
Ette’s downed, inert form. Her unresponsive eyes remained open, forced to stare
only at the blue skies above. “If you’re right, then it’s only a matter of time
before she recovers.”
“All the more reason our butts should be off this planet pronto.” Adrienne stated.
And then, right on cue with her statement, the engines of
a proverbial starship roared nearby. They looked up to see Ghost descending from the sky and hovering
close to the area, its rear facing them. The ramp lowered, permitting Sabine to
step halfway out, her colorful Mandalorian helmet worn for protection, albeit
hiding her alluring face.
“Get in!”
(UP NEXT: Sex in the Disneyverse!)
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