50 Ways to Escape your Lover, a Dragon and a bunch of Damnable Gnomes and Goblins: Attempt 13

Once upon a time, there are a handsome princess and a beautiful princess and their cohorts and minions trapped in a tower by 1 hormonal dragon and 1 immature rebellious dragon. Once upon a time there was such things as sane fairy tales that my mother told me that were definitely not like this mess. I blame that goblin named Dizney.

My names is Charles, my friends and mother call me Charlie. My father is a lovable idiot who named me Charlie and made me a prince. I am a girl not a boy, and it did not matter one bit to my father on that subject.
So I am Prince Charlie who did not actually rescue Princess Jane who hates her name. I guess being called Plain Jane kind of stinks. She is now a very close friend, mostly because she makes me feel like a girl. I mean Max makes me feel all hot and warm but I suspect that is something entirely different since I just want to hug Jane. Mostly I am caught between my desire to punch Max and or kiss him.
Today, I am going to come up with a new name for Jane, she deserves something better than just Jane. When I suggest this to Grimm, the dwarf rolls his eyes and shakes his head then stalks off saying: "of all the things to waste time on..."
Max thinks this is a great idea, then he starts making suggestions. 
"Izmerelda!'
No.
"Sherezadi"
No.
"Bellefontane!"
What the heck is that?
"Never mind."
No.
"Shelia?"
No, definitely not.
"Bubblesticks!"
No Gnome names, are you insane?
"Grismalda."
No Dwarven names either.
"Esabol."
Gods no.
"Pat."
Now you are just mocking me.
"Pattie?"
I punch him.
Max wishes me luck and goes away to commiserate with Grimm on the unreasonableness of women.
"What to you think about Emma?" I say to Jane.
"You mean Princess Emma?"
"Well if I have to marry you, I guess that won't work."
Jane laughs and slings one arm around me as we look out her window at the rocky coastline.
"We make quite the pair." She says. I lean my head against hers.
"We will knock 'em dead, should we ever get out of this place."
"Yes, when you conceive this brilliant plan."
"I was holding out on sheer dumb luck."
That was when there was a loud boom and the tower shook.
We both look at each other and then sprint out the door, me in the lead, Jane holding my hand.
We arrive to find Grimm and Max and Crawley looking out the upper door not at the ground but at the sky.
"Fuking Goblins." Grimm says.
Max slaps him on the back.
Grimm glowers at Max who has a big silly grin on his face.
"Wait for it."
Our two goblins Sodimir and Crackstew are making their escape via a rocket chair.
"Ummm where did they get a rocket chair."
"That twas my chair.' Crawley says as it shoots past us.
"So long Suckers!" Crackstew shouts.
Sodimir starts to wave goodbye and say something but loses his grip and with a look of utter horror falls back past us. 
"Fujera-!" he screams. There is no splat only a crunch and gulp noise as the teen dragon catches him and swallows him in a few sickening chews.
Jane watches Sodimir's demise with a look of grim satisfaction, squeezing my hand.
"What are we waiting for?" I ask.
"That." Max says as he points back at the rocket chair as it reaches it's apogee only to come apart at the joints. Max hands me a handful of nails.
"You're welcome" he says as Crackstew starts screaming and cursing.
Right now I love Max more than coffee.
Grimm blushes as the obscenities continue as Crackstew hangs onto one last rocket strapped to a chair leg.
"Fujerack you all." is the last thing he screams as his rocket runs out of fuel and he goes into descent right over the outer wall. 
"Well look at that." Grimm says as he watches Crackstew make impact. "Goblins bounce.'

50 Ways to Escape your Lover, a Dragon and a bunch of Damnable Gnomes and Goblins: Attempt 11-12

Attempt 11: Create a distraction while the rest of us sneak out the back.
Problem #1: Who will be the distraction?
My solution is that it should be Crikey.
Crawley's suggestion that it has to be Jane, since she is the princess and the only person the dragons won't incinerate on the spot.
Jane says it should be the goblins since it's really their fault she's there in the first place.
Max say it should be Grimm since dwarves smell like old beer and taste like sour milk.
Grimm shoves his hand in Max's mouth and says are you sure that's sour milk.
Max is now throwing up. He stops long enough to curse all dwarves.
The goblins say it be me, since I am a better princess than Jane.
Someone speaks up and says that there is no back door.
We all freeze in place and turn to the speaker who is apparently in the closet.
The someone stops speaking (high pitched voice like a small child or maybe a grandparent or both).
The room gets very quiet.....Max and Grimm sneak over to the closet, count to three and then push it over.
There is a high pitched squeak, a crash and then a muffled voice says:
"Real mature- guys."
The goblins suddenly have rusty knife and hooked daggers out.
"Gnomes." They both say.
"Looks like we found our distraction." I say.

It's just one gnome. (think dwarf no beard, not much hair).
He crawls out of the closet, once Grimm opens it to let him out.
He has Jane's bodice on.
"It's not what it looks like." He says holding up his hands.
"You mean you're not a gnome?" Max asks.
"You mean you're not a cross dressing perv?" Jane asks.
Crawley screams inarticulately and goes for his throat, Grimm trips him.
Grimm grunts and says "Smells like a goat more than a gnome."
The Goblins go for the gnome who uses dazzle on them and the goblins wanders around in a daze.
What is dazzle you might ask?
I have no clue, one moment, two bloodthirsty gnomes are racing towards the gnome and then the gnome throws up his hands (well his arms which are really short) and BAM. smoke and bubbles appear out of thin air and the goblins wander around in a stupor.
You asked.

One hour later, Cogspinner, the gnome, is dangling by a rope with a big sheet tied to him reading
"Eat Me." painted on it in tomato juice.
The rest of us are sneaking out the "back" which turns out to be a dead end.
"Fuking Gnomes." Grimm say staring at the collapsed passage out. Looks like the Zeppelin crushed it when it crashed and exploded.
"Told you so." Cogspinner says behind the Sodimir (who jumps out of his skin...figuratively- because otherwise that would be so much eww).
We all turn to glare at the Gnome.
We all stare at the Gnome.
My brain starts screaming.
(No distraction).
"Fuke!" I whisper.

What follows is a mass charge back to the tower.
There is a lot of noise, stumbling, tripping, crying and pushing....mostly by Crawley and the goblins.
But we all make it back inside.
"Fuking Gnomes!" Grimm growls.
Cogspinner shrugs and heads for the pantry with a can opener.

My brain starts screaming.
"Where are the dragons?'
Everyone stops and looks at me.

We go look.
There is a knight fighting the younger dragon- and winning. There is a pack of men-at-arms fighting the other dragon and losing but slowly.
We are at the upper door (the one with no landing).
The Knight stops with his sword locked in the claws of the dragon and looks at us.
We gape at him. He shrugs apologetically and whistles to his men.
One of the men-at-arms disengages and rushes over to the knight.
The knight points at us.
We wave.
The man-at-arms does a facepalm.
What is a facepalm?
let me show you.

The Knight holds up his hand to the Dragon with one finger up in the universal sign of "wait a minute."

The Knight smacks the man-at-arms on the back of his helmet. There is an audible clang.

The Knight sheaths his sword, and shrugs, whistles to the others who desist in their attack and apologize to the rather confused dragon. They walk over to the knight, who turns to us and says.

"Sorry, didn't realize you were already spoken for already, my lady."

He bows and turns on his heel and marches away out of the castle.

The man-at-arms hurries after apologizing.

"Sorry, my prince, our intel assured us that she wasn't rescued yet." 

"Obviously, it was bad intel!" The knight/prince says before disappearing from view.

"Well Fuke." I say.

There is an audible sob from Jane.

So there you have it.

Attempt 11- total fail.

Attempt 12 (the rescue) or as I put it. The Epic Fail.

Jane turns to me, tears on her face and says.

"This IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"

Then she runs away bawling.

Well crying. That's how Max tries to sell it.

I'd say blubbering.

As it turns out, I get to be the one to go comfort her as I am the only other female.

I would have made Cogspinner do it since he might as well be female....but she hates him more than she hates me.

"Jane?"

I find her in her room. she is huddled in the far corner head on her knees sniffling.

"Go away/" she says trying not to sob again.

"I would but no one will let me out of this room until you forgive me...or kill me."

I go over and sit down next to her. 

She looks at me and I can see she is not really mad at me.

I put my arm around her and she leans her head on my pauldron. Then it hits me.

It's the Fuking armor!

"I think I need some help getting this armor off."

Turns out to be a liberating experience for both of us.

Without the armor, I turn out to be a girl like her. She finally relaxes and a giggle escapes her lips as she gets what I just got.

"It was the armor that killed the rescue." she says quietly while smoothing out my shirt.

I take off the shirt and pants as Jane blushes.

"What?" I ask.

"You are so pretty without all that steel." She says looking at me.

I blush right down to my toes. No one (other than my mother) has ever called me pretty before.

"Can I try on one of your dresses?"

Jane laughs and the moment of admiration goes away as we go to her wardrobe and look through her dresses.

Turns out, we are almost the same height and shape. 

It feels weird wearing a dress. For one thing, I feel the breeze on my legs and- well if you are a guy, try on one sometime or get a kilt if you are too manly for a skirt/dress.

I feel pretty and I am okay with that.

What's more, I have a best friend and coconspirator now. 

50 Ways to Escape your Lover, a Dragon and a bunch of Damnable Gnomes and Goblins: Attempt 6-11

I know what you are going to say. I do. I would say it as well if it just weren't so painful.
Sodimir and Crackstew are full of ideas.
Unlucky for us, most of them are downright awful. Lucky for us after the last one the Goblins decided to stop making suggestions.

Attempt 6. Run for it.
Sodimir suggests this one at dinner. Everyone laughs except Sodimir who shrugs then jumps up and runs for it. He gets 35 paces from the door, meets up with a wall of flame and sprints back into the tower. He doesn't smell any worse for it, I mean he already smelt terrible after the exploding zeppelin incident.

Attempt 7. Lucky number does not mean lucky break.
We should all run in different directions. Sodimir's next brilliant plan fails about 4 feet out the door when he realizes that he is again the only one running. He actually stops and turns his back on his impending doom to wag his finger at me (and the others) before he burst into flame and runs back between my legs (I have burn marks on my armor) to plunge into the soup of the day Jane was busy burning on the firepit.
Jane is not talking to me right now for criticizing her cooking.
it also doesn't help that I reassured her that I thought the soup was boiling oil for the dragon or that it should be.
On the bright side Sodimir smells like vegetable stew now.

Attempt 8. Poison the dragons. 
Crackstew has this brilliant idea until Grimm tells him that this is only going to happen if we had a horse or a cow to do it with, since the dragons show no interest in our canned goods (which Max and I take turns running out to the Zeppelin wreckage to retrieve between ideas). Grimm does offer to feed Sodimir to the dragon once we've poisoned him, though.
Sodimir tells Grimm that dwarves taste better than goblins.
Nobody agrees but I point out that smelling like stale beer is only slightly better then smelling like old shoes.
Now Grimm won't talk to me- or the Goblins who thought old shoes smelled really nice.

Attempt 9.  We can bargain with the Dragons.
Crackstew says you can bargain with dragons. 
We all agree (too quickly).
Now Crackstew won't talk to anyone of us now.

Attempt 10. Sodimir can bargain with anything.
You would think the two running incidents would have taught him something.
It did not.
Also. a good rule is to have something to bargain with.
Jane hit Sodimir with a frying pan when he offered to give the dragon the princess.
Sodimir apparently thought I was the princess. Jane tried to apologize but Sodimir won't let her come near him.

Attempt 11. We need a distraction.
Yep, we are still arguing about that one right now.

50 Ways to Escape your Lover, a Dragon and a bunch of Damnable Gnomes and Goblins: Attempt 5

We're running out of food.
This is bad.
Not that I enjoy canned food.
This is good.
It means the goblins are coming with resupply in a fireproof zeppelin!

I am pumped, cause we are going to highjack that puppy!!!

We carefully go over the plan.

Grimm and Max will wait until the zeppelin is close and grab it's docking ropes and then Jane will show some leg (we had to give her something to do) and then I will overpower the goblin captain and we will steal the zeppelin and escape.

1 hour later a message arrives via bat (messenger bats are very popular with goblins apparently) stating that the shipment will be delayed another week and they are sorry for the delay. On the back of the message is a recipe for something called Air Souffle and an off color joke about a turnip and a rabbit.

15 minutes later a 3 span section of the roof of the tower collapses under the load of a crate of canned food  and Grimm and Crawley are buried in them as the crate comes apart (also it's on fire). We hear the Goblins laughing at us as they make their own escape. Something about the tower being bugged.

2 minutes later the lot of us watch the Dragon chase the goblin zeppelin around the courtyard. 

Goblin Zeppelins are not as big as I imagined. Also not fireproof either as the goblin screaming indicates as the whole contraption plunges down into the courtyard.

10 minutes later we are joined by Sodomir Gett and Crackstew, our two new tower denizens who are mildy crispy midland goblins. Apparent Crankshaft and Corkscrew are now toast, but as Gett says they were the lucky ones.

Goblins look okay but smell like burnt rubber.

"Who's she talkin' too?"

"Best not ask, she gets grumpy if interrupted..." Max says.

"Too late laddy." Grimm says.

50 Ways to Escape your Lover, a Dragon and a bunch of Damnable Gnomes and Goblins: Attempt 4

Parachute/glider.
Breakfast.

"I know, lets make a Parachute!" I announce to all gathered eating something called Canned Hash (which looks disgusting but if you get past the salt and graininess, it is really disgusting but edible).

"What is a Parachute?" Max asks.

"Seriously?" Then it hits me that a parachute is one of Ralph's inventions. So I explain it.

"A parachute is a device made out of cloth-" I began.

"Ooh, like our bed sheets?" Jane interjects.

"Yes! And you gather the corners and tie them with ropes and uh, add some more ropes to the sides near the middle. Then you take the other ends the ropes and tie them to an object like a" I look around trying to remember what Ralph said to tie them to. "a chair."

"And?" Crawley says.

"And we launch it out the door at the top of the tower and parachute down out of the tower."

"Girly, I see a problem here." Grimm says between mouthfuls, of course, he loves this stuff.

"What is that?"

"Assuming this cock-eyed contraption actually works what's going to keep it from going straight down the dragon's gullet?" Grimm adds burp to accentuate his point.

"I, uhm, it will drift away on the breeze?"

"Right!" Grimm says while cleaning out a can with his finger.

"it's a good plan." I grump.

In the end Crikey, I mean Crawley  volunteers to try this item out.
Two hours later, four sheets, 3 left over ropes, and one chair. We are at the upper doorgetting ready, we push the sheets out and Crawley steps out for the chair when a blast of hot air and fire comes up from below and the sheets inflate on the wind and the chair rips out of Crawley's grasp to soar out over the castle.

"Would you look at that?" Grimm says "It works"
Crawley looks sick as the chairachute (yes I wanted to call it that) drifts away

"We can make more-" I begin to say.

Then the sheets catch fire and the whole thing plummets back to the courtyard and smash on the stones into tiny splinters.

"Well, I might have overstated your success girlie." Grimm says.

Crawley still looks disappointed.

Max looks down, puts his arm around me, sighs.

"Well Prince Charming, back to the drawing board?"

I just slouch and stomp my way back inside.

"How about a glider?"

"No."

"How about we tie a rope to the \dwarf and swing him out as bait and when the dragon swallows him we ride the dragon to freedom."

"I think I am going to kill Max."

"Good luck on that stumpy!" Max says before making for the door.

"No!"

They both stop and look at me.
Then Jane looks in at me.
Then Crawley.

I just shrieked out no.

I am such a girl right now.
At first I feel horror
And then the smile comes out.
Max is grinning.
Grimm is not.

It is all good.

50 Ways to Escape your Lover, a Dragon and a bunch of Damnable Gnomes and Goblins: Attempt 3

We could make wings and glide out of the tower?

"That's idiotic!" Jane

It worked for Icarus and Daedalus.

"Who?"

Those greek guys who escape from King Minos buy flying.

"Uh, not to be a downer, but Icarus wings melt and he died." Max puts in.

Dammit, forgot about that stupid kid.

"Kids ruin everything." Crawley says.

"Besides all we have it a feather bed and no candles." Jane interjects

"Goose Feathers." Max sighs.

We could build a hot air balloon out of sheets and - nope I got nothing.

"No more fire!" Crawley screams and then bursts into tears and flees the room.

Battering Ram!

"Now yer thinkin'" Grimm says from where he has been sleeping in the corner.

So we search the tower.
Three floors later, two wardrobes, 2 tables and 3 beds and not enough wood to make a good ram.

How about the rafters
We all look up.
"Who's got an ax?" Grimm asks

Wait, I thought you had an ax?

"Well, I did, but I lost it when I was outrunning and jumping away from that Dragon."

Ohhhh, right. Nuts.

Well no one has an ax. I have a sword.

which proves to be a complete waste of time. Swords are not axes by any stretch of the imagination.

Grimm tries anyway. Chips my sword. At least he didn't break it.

We all stare at the rafter in anger.

"It'd make such a good ram." Grim sighs.

In the end we go to bed. except Crawley's bed is broken- it looked promising. he takes the bath tub.
Jane and I end up in her bed again.
Grimm takes the bed from Max with one well placed fart.
Max ends up on the couch.
So do I since Jane snores.
Max and I snuggle down on the couch.

"Your feet smell."

"You could sleep up here with me instead of that end to end, foot to head approach you are trying." Max  says and waggles his eyebrows at me.

His eyebrows are a lot more attractive than his smelly feet.
So we end up snuggling face to face in each arms.

Max gives me the smulder.
I shove him off the couch.

"What?" Max stares in shock.

"That looks is trouble." I say and a giggle escapes.

"It's always worked for me in the past." Max says as he tries to climb back onto the couch.

"Until you tried it on me....wait have you used it on Jane?'

"Yes, I mean no- I mean...I don't know what I mean..." Max looks very cute right now kneeling by the couch.

"It didn't work on her either did it?"

Max slumps and huffs in a very charming way while scowling at the same time.

"No."

I could kiss him right now but I don't.

I lean back and star at the rafter and contemplate my need to kiss him.

After a moment, I look back at him to invite back into my arms and find him asleep, his head leaning back against the couch.

Nuts.

50 Ways to Escape your Lover, a Dragon and a bunch of Damnable Gnomes and Goblins

Attempt #2
Rope ladder.
Problem not enough rope.
also it's flammable as max who is currently 40 feet down just found out.
Imagine if you will:
I mean it, imagine it.
Jane, Grimm and Myself peice together six pieces of rope, sheets, 2 belts and one nightgown (I am not judging)
"Dammit all I loved that nightgown!" Crikey Crawley whimpers as Max prepares to descend.

"Relax Crikey." Max says in a placating tone. "I am sure it won't come to harm."

Famous last words.

So down Max went as we struggle to lower him.
Forty foot later, we ran out of rope.
"It's only another 60 or so foot! Jump!" Grimm yells.

"Funny." Max yells back.

"Try swing for that ledge!" I yell.

Max starts swinging out for a ledge some 25 feet away.
We watch him run sideways along the tower side and jump out into space and swing out and up and miss the ledge. On his way back, his shadow alerts the Dragon- let's call him Fussypants.
Fussypants snorts out a fireball which misses Max.

"Ha you missed!" Max yells and laughs.

"Did not." Fussypants yells back.

"I am still her, very unlit." Max retorts.

"Uh Max?" I call as Jane starts screaming.

"Oh crap." Max says and starts a hasty assent.

Crikey's Nightgown is ablaze.
Then the first rope is aflame and the others soon catch fire.
I have never seen a man run straight up a tower wall until today.

"Hot! Hot! Hot!" Max yells as he rapidly ascends and actually makes it into my arms before the whole rope thing turns mostly to ash in our hands and we drop the remains into the courtyard.

Max and I look down.
Crikey is crying, so is Jane.
Grimm is guffawing.
well scratch attempt number 2.