Snowflakes peel from Elsa's hair as she soars into the clouds on a trail of fog. Thunder rumbles between the low-lying clouds, and raindrops splatter on her face, but she doesn't stop flying, not even when flashes of light pepper the grey clouds and her eardrums threaten to burst. Finally, when Arendelle appears but a grain of light beneath her bare feet, and Grmfold an ugly brown stain surrounding it, Elsa stops amidst the clouds. Her icy wings flap silently, each sweep scattering snowflakes into the wind.

With her head dipped low, panes of ice materialize around Elsa, each one casting back her reflection in eerie detail. It's been days since Elsa last gazed into a mirror, so afraid she was of seeing the cold darkness left within her eyes. As her reflection comes into view, Elsa grimaces at the bruises on her face from fighting with Merida, but the glittering ice gown fluttering in the wind takes her breath away. The icy fabric hugged Elsa's figure like a glove, and the cape refracted the sunlight in shifting hues of pink and blue; all this without even the slightest thought from her.

She never knew she could do something like this.

Before long, Elsa finds herself heaving with breathlessness from the thin air, but the silence thrills her. No one could touch her here, not Hans, not the State or the military, or anyone. It doesn't occur to her until now - when she looks down upon the tiny city of Arendelle-Grimfold and Weselton to the east - just how big the world really is. In the distance, she makes out cities on the coast of a great ocean, and dozens of villages peppering the slopes of a craggy mountain. She could fly anywhere. There'd be people who could welcome her and her powers with open arms. Perhaps there could even be someone else like her.

She could even flee to the mountains and settle alone in a majestic ice palace until time itself consumed her in its infinite span.

Shaking her head, Elsa stares at her reflection again, the emptiness within her eyes striking her cold. It's useless; she could flee Arendelle and pretend none of this happened, but nothing could change the fact that she so desperately needed Anna in her life. Frowning at her image in the ice, Elsa trembles at the reality of what was likely happening if Anna isn't already dead. The storm around her threatens to brew into a full-blown blizzard as thoughts of Anna's suffering fill Elsa's mind. Clutching at her forehead, the ice queen begins to weep, each icy tear she sheds plummeting towards the earth like hail.

The panes of ice fold into one another, before disappearing and leaving Elsa sobbing amongst the clouds. With a heavy heart, Elsa casts her gaze towards Grimfold - nothing more than an ugly skid-mark on the desert plains. Nowhere else is the brutality of Hans's reign more evident than that shithole, but so is the tenacity of those willing to fight back. Even the ones she had turned down before. A sickening feeling bubbles up within her as she thinks of going back to them, but fiercer still is the determination of seeing Anna again - dead or alive.

Tucking her wings behind her, Elsa's sobbing fades into a grimace as she dives towards the city. Her eyes still gleam with tears, but the ice queen cries no longer.

Darkness has fallen upon Grimfold by the time Elsa descends upon one of its gritty streets. With the fuel restrictions tighter than ever, and the lamps burning even dimmer than before, no one notices the solitary beam of frost landing amidst the clumps of grey snow strewn about in the streets. A homeless man beside a burning oil barrel looks up at Elsa, her ice gown a glittering contrast to the ugliness around her. He raises an eyebrow, before taking another swig of moonshine and slumping back to sleep.

Against the flickering wood fire, Elsa makes out a sign on the edge of a crumbling building: Pork Lane. It doesn't make any sense to her, so she continues down the street as the stench of smoke fills her lungs. Elsa walks the entire length of a city block before noticing how quiet the place is. Looking up at the broken windows, Elsa catches sight of a woman staring down at her, child in arm. Fright flashes across the lady's eyes when Elsa's enormous ice wings come into view, and she shuts her windows.

Sighing, Elsa continues wandering the street, before the rattling of a tin can breaks through the silence. Looking up, Elsa spots a child scampering away from behind a wall where he had been hiding.

"Wait!" Elsa exclaims, her voice echoing through the street.

Clutching her gown, Elsa dashes after the child. It's useless, the street urchin darts through the darkness like a hare, leaping over rubble and disappearing into the night fog. Without thinking, Elsa follows his trail in the snow, before finding herself in an alleyway even darker than the main street. Fear grips her heart; an ice scepter glowing with frost appears in her right hand, but it does nothing to steady her breathing.

Footsteps thud down the alley from afar. Whirling around on her heels, Elsa keeps the scepter poised in front of her, magic curdling in its orb. Light glows against her pale skin; it takes a full minute of heart-pounding tension before the image of a man appears through the fog. Raising her scepter, icy needles appear on the ground, directed at him. Elsa grits her teeth when she sees who it is.

"Oaken," Elsa snarls, holding out a frozen hand in front of her, "don't...don't come any closer."

"How nice of you to show up here," Oaken snarls, stepping away from the ice spreading around his feet, "it's been awhile since we last negotiated. I trust that you've-"

"Look, I need to talk to you, but we can't discuss things here."

"Did you not notice something different on your way in? A curious absence of soldiers, perhaps?"

Elsa's eyes widen at his revelation. Lowering her scepter, she asks, "You mean-"

"We control this sector of Grimfold," Oaken answers, "it isn't much, and the State won't admit it, but they won't come in here anymore for fear of their precious soldiers' lives."

Hope rises within Elsa's heart. She clenches onto her scepter and asks, "You're not going to stop at one sector, are you?"

"No, I'm not going to stop until the State is destroyed."

Elsa stares at Oaken, surrounded by hundreds of icicles. Her skin crawls with fear when she spots him taking out a cigar. At once, the orb on her scepter glows with the fury of the sun, and Oaken's frozen cigar drops to the ground with a thunk.

"Don't you dare smoke in front of me!" Elsa shrieks.

"I see you haven't lost your temper," Oaken smirks, allowing his eyes to rove up and down Elsa's figure-hugging ice-gown, "you look different, though. And I think I like this outfit better than your crummy uniform."

"Save it," Elsa orders, "I'm not wearing the Arendelle uniform ever again."

With a grin, Oaken nods slowly, pausing to think, before saying, "So I'm assuming you'll be on our side from now on, then."

"Far from it," Elsa growls, "it's just that my interests are aligned with yours, for now."

"And what exactly are you looking to gain from our conversation?"

Elsa swallows the lump forming in her throat.

"T-they have Anna," Elsa says, shaking her head, "I need to get her back."

Oaken frowns, crossing his arms, "And what does she have to do with us?"

"She's in the Specials facility, I know it," Elsa answers, "I want to attack the base and break her out."

"What's stopping you?"

"The Specials," Elsa says, "I can't go up against more than one of them at a time, but if they were to be deployed into Grimfold during-"

"No!" Oaken snarls, "I'm not risking further loss of rebel lives for you to save your goddamned girlfriend. You didn't even want to help us when we gave you generous terms."

Elsa's fists clench into little balls of ice as she yells back at him, "Well apparently it was worth losing a few dozen rebels to lure me into a trap which you didn't even know could work! How many fighters died that day? Ten? Twenty?"

"That was different," Oaken says, "we had Annie to fight for us. Now there's nothing."

"You have something even better than an insane girl with metal claws for hands," Elsa pleads, "someone who knows how the Arendelle Army ticks, who can change the course of this war overnight."

"Who would that be?"

Elsa sighs, allowing the icicles around Oaken to retreat, before answering, "Me."

"You're willing to help us?"

"Only until I get her back," Elsa pleads, clutching at her scepter, "please, Oaken, I don't have family, I don't have anything. I only have her."

"At least you have the hope of your loved ones being alive. The rest of us have to make do with memories," Oaken laments, "pray tell, how do you intend to aid us?"

A pane of ice materializes behind Elsa. With a flick of her wrist, Elsa sketches a rough map of Grimfold's quadrants, its streets mere lines in the ice.

"You've been choosing your battles poorly, Oaken," Elsa explains, marking out the refinery where he last attacked, "the Arendelle Army specializes in delivering an indiscriminate amount of firepower onto one location, before engaging in quick, decisive confrontations. This was how we defended ourselves from the constant invasion attempts by Weselton in the past."

Oaken folds his arms and leans closer.

"What they are not prepared for, are multiple protracted battles with which they are unable to concentrate either men or materiel. The command structure just isn't suited to such warfare, especially in a built-up environment which nullifies the use of their artillery and air support"

"What do you propose?" Oaken asks.

"Strike quickly at targets across the city," Elsa suggests, "choose places they can't afford to lose - warehouses, bridges, water pumps. If you don't have enough manpower, attack one target before moving onto the next. Unload debris onto the roads, since your men fight on foot anyway; this will obstruct their movement to no end when they try to push more vehicles into the city."

Oaken rubs his chin, "That is risky, I don't have enough resources to commit to an offensive of this scale."

"I can help you," Elsa says, circling a half-dozen targets, "if I attack here, here and here simultaneously. Hans won't know where I am, and that'll confuse the chain of command. Enough time for your fighters to fill in the gaps"

"This isn't going to win us much support from the population," Oaken grumbles.

"We'll have to make it count," Elsa says, "the State relies on Grimfold, but you don't need them for anything. There really is no reason for you to continue in this master-slave arrangement."

"Very good, Elsa. At least we agree on this," Oaken says, daring to step within an arm's length from Elsa, "I think we can work together, for now."

Elsa looks down at the hand placed in front of her. She ponders for a moment, before reaching out and shaking Oaken's hand.

Dawn falls upon Grimfold, waking its citizens with the rattle of gunfire. Explosions rock the city with tremors never felt before since the war. On the edge of the city, soldiers scamper over coils of barbed wire, retreating from the tidal wave of white descending upon them. Their commanding officer fires blindly into the attack, yelling at his men to fall back to the gates around a coal power plant. Dozens of snow wolves emerge from the avalanche, baring their glinting teeth at the soldiers. Despite their terror, the wolves prove easy targets for the men, and they make short work of the beasts through the sights of their rifles.

"Advance! Beat them back to the perimeter!" the CO yells over the noise of gunfire. Radio sets crackle with the static of his orders being repeated, and the soldiers leap over sandbags, firing incessantly at the wolves. The dying snow beasts sublimate into clouds of white fog, and the tide of snow slows to a halt. Just when it appears that they have stopped the assault, she appears.

With the majesty of the rising sun, the winged ice lady drifts above them through the bank of fog, wielding a gleaming ice sword held aloft in the frosty air. The men stagger back, keeping their rifles pointed at the traitor whom HQ had warned them about just a day prior. A blizzard brews around the power plant, whipping her blonde tresses to and fro in the wind. With a shriek, the ice lady unleashes her wrath, slamming her sword into the ground and sending men flying from the fury of her frost.

"Shoot her! Shoot her!" the CO's voice crackles over the radio.

Blinded by her dazzling beauty, the men miss most their shots, allowing Elsa to continue her blistering assault unabated. A young, freshly conscripted soldier stares with an open jaw at the majesty of her glittering ice-gown, a stark contrast to the icy destruction her sword brings. He turns and sprints back to the guardhouse, ignoring his CO's pleas to hold the line. Ducking into the rickety wooden hut, the boy reappears with an automatic grenade launcher, and glares at the ice lady laying waste to his comrades. A surge of adrenaline sends him vaulting over the sandbags and hopping between frozen bodies littering the ground. He flicks the safety off, and despite doing it only once before in training, manages to put Elsa in his sights.

Holding his breath, the boy unleashes a torrent of incendiary grenades at Elsa as she tears her sword through a humvee. She spots the fist-sized lumps of metal sailing towards her a second too late, freezing one, before another explodes in her face. Shards of burning magnesium and phosphorous rip into Elsa's flesh, blasting her into the ground in a burning heap.

Click. Click. Click. the boy continues pummeling Elsa's body with grenades until it goes empty and all that's left of her is a crater filled with burning metal. Breathless, he drops the launcher onto the ground with a thunk.

"Holy shit!" another soldier exclaims, clutching a frost-bitten gash in his arm, "You got her!"

Slumping into the snow, the CO watches as the blizzard fails to let up, and every bone in his body trembles at the sight of another avalanche bearing down on them.

"No," he mumbles, struggling to get to his feet, "this isn't over."

"What?" the soldier shrieks, "but he killed her! He blew her to pieces!"

The CO switches the channel on his radio to another company located across town, and raises the volume. At once, the crackle of gunfire ripples through the speakers.

"Shit, she's gaining on us, flank her! Take cover behind the vehicles!"

The radio goes silent, and the men begin retreating from the blizzard bearing down on them.

"That's Charlie company at the fuel dumps," the CO explains, keeping an eye on the storm, "right now."

"Holy shit, but t-that means she could be anywhere!"

"Aye, she could be," the CO says, as the ground trembles beneath his feet at the approaching avalanche, "anywhere and nowhere at the same time."

Leaning against a railing, Elsa watches from a water tower as her blizzard consumes the city. She shuts her eyes and tries once more to rid the hundreds of screaming voices filling her mind, but it's impossible; not with creations as ferocious as hers. The images of contorted, frozen limbs attached to lifeless beings saturate every neuron in her brain, as each one of her half-dozen visages unleash their icy hell on the Army.

Just needing something to distract herself, Elsa picks up a radio and listens to the traffic. Sick of hearing gunfire and screaming interspersing lengths of silence, she fiddles with the dial until it picks up radio traffic from the Arendelle base. The distance makes the exasperated voices choppy and erratic, forcing her to listen closely.

"Major enemy offensive in Grimfold...all twelve sectors….they think it's Elsa…"

"Uh...Wilford, can you report….available and strength…."

"Inclement weather….proceed on foot…"

"Priority to Northend Bridge...prepare to land Special Forces into Grimfold….Counter-offensive starting from Sector eight."

Elsa gasps at the last sentence, before looking towards Arendelle. Failing to spot any helicopters foolhardy enough to maneuver through the storm, ice peels from her hands when the thought of rescuing Anna appears in her mind. Wings sprout from her back, and she leaps into the wind. At once, her concentration sheds the control over her minions, leaving the rebel forces alone in their conquest of the city. Elsa's svelte form leaves a trail of fog as she streaks upwards above the clouds. The sun fails to melt Elsa's icy wings, glittering white like the train of her gown. Circling the city of Arendelle, Elsa peers through the clouds, before diving towards her target.

The parade square tiles shatter into clumps of ice when Elsa slams into the ground like a meteor. Looking around, she sighs in relief at the complete desertion surrounding her, and starts running towards the research facility.

Her unnoticed entrance is short-lived, as air raid sirens begin blaring.

Elsa jerks her head to the perimeter, observing the watchmen in the towers pointing at her and frantically calling their officers. It takes a few more seconds for bullets to start whizzing at her. Without even thinking, plates of armor materialize around her body, allowing her to make it to the gates unscathed. The next few minutes pass in a daze. Elsa's powers make short work of doors and guards: blasting through hinges and freezing soldiers in their place. It doesn't take much for her to reach the basement - after all, this was where she was born again, in the words of President Hans.

Fear clouds Elsa's mind the further she advances into the facility. Unopposed, she passes through an empty laboratory, complete with gurneys and medical equipment. Her mind begins to unravel when she spots sterile tools on workbenches, the same ones she saw being used on children her age. Shutting her eyes, Elsa tries to dissociate the images of children with telekinetic potential being experimented on, and she forces herself to press on towards the detention cells. The lack of guards does nothing to soothe her nerves, and by the time she reaches the cell block, streaks of frost erupt from her fingers involuntarily.

Holding her breath, Elsa stares down the entrance to the cells. With immense concrete and steel blast doors, the place resembles more of a bank vault than a prison, but then again - the people within them are nothing short of gold to Hans.

Hope surges within Elsa; hope that just behind this door laid her lover. In a few moments they'd be together again. Elsa's skin bristles with the anticipation of freeing Anna from Hans's clutches. She pours every ounce of hatred into her hands, until dark wisps of frost begin to curdle between her fingertips. With the pent-up rage brimming from her skin, Elsa's form takes on an ethereal quality, the once-glittering gown resembles a shadow of its former glory, and the blizzard brewing around her echoes with an ominous rumble.

At last, with a shriek, Elsa blasts the door with ice. Despite being built to withstand a direct bomb hit, the door shatters beneath the ice magic, sending bits of frozen metal flying everywhere. The sheer might of Elsa's powers knocks out the electrical supply. Darkness engulfs the facility, before the backup lights come on, bathing the corridor in a red glow. Heaving from exhaustion, Elsa stumbles through the shattered remnants of her stench of sulphur burns in her nostrils, and despite her powers, Elsa can't help but feel a foreboding heat searing her skin as she walks past the cell doors.

Flinching at the noise of pounding from behind the doors, Elsa gasps when she spots a familiar figure standing at the end of the corridor. Anna? No - the little menace before her was the cause of her imprisonment.

Lucifer.

His eyes shine with a crimson brilliance. Of all the specials capable of killing her, this one doesn't even need Hans's mind control to take her down.

"Welcome back, Elsa," Lucifer's voice echoes through the craggy interior, "did you forget something?"

Elsa's eyes flicker in the darkness as she watches tongues of flame licking at his arms.

"Please, Lucifer, this has nothing to do with you, just let me get what I came for."

"I disobeyed an order today," Lucifer adds, "Hans deployed me to Grimfold, but I just couldn't go, because I knew what a whore like you would do. I knew you couldn't bear to let her go."

"I-I already killed Merida fleeing from her," Elsa pleads, "I don't want to hurt anyone else. Please, just let me take Anna, I swear I'll never come back to Arendelle again."

"You're fucking pathetic," Lucifer spits, flames spewing from his nostrils, "I should have roasted you alive when you came back for that whore. She belongs to Hans now."

Elsa's heart leaps at his last few words.

"Anna...s-she's alive?" Elsa asks, resisting the urge to rip open every cell door in the corridor.

"I don't think she's in a state one would consider alive, anymore," Lucifer sneers, "that cunt was capable of putting up quite a bit of a fight. It's amazing that a girl like her could endure so much pain."

Ice strikes Elsa right in her chest; she staggers backwards, the gravity of his words piercing her cold. Darkness overwhelms the ice lady, the very light around her fading into blackness. The hope which had risen in her heart earlier now dashed by the hatred that anyone could harm such a beautiful person. Ignoring the uncontrollable shaking in her hands, a scepter materializes next to Elsa - this time covered in thorns and emanating pure evil.

"You did this," Elsa snarls, her voice trembling with rage, "I'll fucking kill you all."

A smirk forms on Lucifer's face.

"To think you were so hesitant just a month ago," he mumbles beneath his breath.

Elsa snatches the scepter, ignoring the thorny ice cutting into her hands. She narrows her eyes at the burning boy in front of her and blasts him with a narrow, focused ice beam, only for him to respond with a vortex of fire. Ice and fire slam into each other with apocalyptic intensity, sending boiling water gushing through the corridor. Steam hisses around Elsa; despite the thick air, she continues her assault on Lucifer, guided merely by the glow of his powers fighting back against hers.

A flash of light blinds Elsa, before she's swept from her place by a wave of heat that burns away her wings. Freezing her feet into the ground, she gasps at the sight in front of her. A literal demon erupts from Lucifer's place, complete with glowing horns and wings wreathed in flame. Yelling curses, the demon charges at Elsa, pummeling through wall after wall of ice and reducing the corridor's ceiling to rubble. Panic erupts in Elsa's brain; before she recalls this happening before.

Let him come closer, a voice creeps into her mind.

A flaming trident appears in Lucifer's hand. Glowing red hot, he hurls the weapon at Elsa. The glowing streak catches Elsa off-guard, she freezes its tips a split-second before it slams into her, sending her flying out the doorway. Clutching the jagged points, Elsa considers getting up, but feigns a cry of pain, before dispelling the ice around her. The trident shatters when she pulls it from her body; Elsa struggles on her hands and knees, before buckling over and slumping to the floor.

"I always knew you were weak," Lucifer growls, his voice pounding away in Elsa's brain, "pathetic whore."

"No, please don't," Elsa whimpers, clutching at the wound on her stomach, "I swear i won't come back-"

"Too late for that," Lucifer sneers, materializing a flaming sword in his hand, "at least there's one order I won't be disobeying today."

The boiling water scalds Elsa's skin, but she keeps her gaze fixed on Lucifer striding towards her. Lava drips from his flaming sword, hissing as it licks the water's surface. With each step closer he takes, Elsa retches at the stench of sulphur burning her lungs. She looks up at the infernal demon barely three feet from her. With skin glowing cherry-red and embers snorting from his nostrils, there's no mistaking that the infernal beast before her had succumbed to the horror of Hans's genetic manipulation.

"I'm going to enjoy roasting you alive," Lucifer sneers, before rearing up his fire-sword and thrusting downwards.

Shrieking, Elsa leaps up and grabs hold of Lucifer's claw-like hands. The searing heat burns into her hands a second before they turn to ice. With every ounce of her mental strength, she pours more and more cold into the boy, freezing his arms solid.

"No!" Lucifer screams. The boy fights back; his hands glow red-hot with rage, but it does nothing to melt the craggy veins of ice infecting his arms.

Feather by feather, Elsa's icy wings re-materialize. The immense wings wrap around Lucifer's screaming body, sending icy darts into every joint of his skeleton and spreading further cold into the very core of his being. Screwing her eyes shut, Elsa feels his strength ebbing, but even in his dying moments, a raging heat fights back against her. At last, with a gasp, Elsa plunges a hand into his chest. Lucifer's brittle skin gives way easily; she freezes his red-hot heart solid beneath her fingertips and rips it from his ribcage, shattering it into pieces beneath her feet.

Failing to cast another glance at Lucifer's dead body falling from her arms, Elsa stares down the row of identical looking prison doors in front of her. It'd take her a good amount of time to tear open each one of them, and the sirens were still blaring in her ears. Instead, Elsa rushes to the control room and stares at the array of buttons before her. The security cameras within each cell had been knocked out by the power failure, but a set of keys had been left on the dashboard, above a row of key holes labelled with cell numbers.

Picking up the keys, Elsa considers unlocking every single cell, confident that one of them had to contain Anna. Her hands tremble with anticipation. What if one of them contained an animal like the one she saw in Grimfold? In the back of her mind, Elsa sees a dazed Anna staggering from her cell, only to get torn apart by an unstable beast driven mad by one of Hans's experiments.

"No," Elsa mumbles, shaking her head.

Beneath the red lights, a drawer labelled SUBJECTS catches her attention. Elsa rips open the drawer and retrieves a stack of files. Faced with unfamiliar names, she crumples the first few beneath her shaking hands, tossing them over her shoulder until the name Anna appears before her eyes. Flipping open the file, Elsa finds her cell number and promptly opens the door. She takes another look at the file to make sure she's opened the right one.

It's Anna's picture on the cover page; no one could mistake those locks of strawberry blonde hair and freckles on her cheeks, but something else isn't quite right. Elsa looks at the name again.

Anna Styrke (Born Annabelle Felgard, November 7th, 2136)

"That can't be," Elsa mumbles, looking again at her own surname written beside Anna's.

Dropping the file, Elsa races down the corridor, hoping to hell her sister's still alive inside.