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.