Chapter One

Adventure is Out There

Prince Alfred was actually kind of delighted when he got the curse put on him.

For 19 long years, he'd been stuck inside the Kingdom of America: forced to spend his youth learning every royal duty from how to bow properly, to how to avoid wars with a strategic ball invitation. Riveting stuff…

Even when he was allowed on diplomatic voyages to other kingdoms, he'd be restricted to the confines of their castle walls. And as brilliant as Alfred was at avoiding boring lessons, escaping bodyguards, and causing trouble when he was supposed to be learning how to run a kingdom – the people around him were just as good at finding him and dragging him back to his lessons.

For someone who wasn't a princess locked in a tower, it felt an awful lot like he was a princess locked in a tower…

Of course, it wasn't like he didn't care about being a good king. Alfred knew all this tedious training was important in the long run, and he did try hard to prove himself. He desperately wanted to be a king of whom the Americans could be proud.

But even though a castle-full of people had spent 19 years moulding him into the perfect future king, in Alfred's opinion, he was still missing one very crucial piece of training to make him a worthy king.

It was all because of the stories…

No matter how old he got – no matter how many lessons he was forced to take on the reality of ruling a kingdom – Alfred couldn't help but remember all the stories he'd read or been told as a child. Stories where princes went out in the world to seek adventure, kill dragons and rescue damsels. Stories where princes had to prove themselves in an entirely different way than he was asked to do.

He knew that they were just fairy tales. He knew that this was not something that actually mattered to anyone when it came to running a kingdom; his people would much rather have someone who could miraculously lower their taxes than a king who had once done some cool stuff when he was younger.

But still, the memories of these fairy tales princes stuck with Alfred his whole life through. They'd been ingrained at such a young age that even as he grew up he couldn't quite shake the feeling that he would never be a true prince until he had done what those princes had, proven himself the way they did. If he didn't go on an adventure and save the day and come back a hero, then he wasn't worthy to be king at all.

And so, when Alfred got a curse placed upon him, he took it as a blessing. Finally he was allowed out into the world on a daring quest. Finally, he could be a real prince!

His parents agreed that he must go and find a way to lift the curse. And to help him on his way they told him the rumours of a princess, far, far away from the Kingdom of America, who would grant wishes to the man who rescued her.

But even with a potential cure for the curse, the king and queen worried terribly. They had raised a boy using books and lectures – he wasn't used to harsh experience and dangerous risks. They warned him (rather frantically) that this would be unlike anything they had prepared him for in his royal training. The people he would meet on his journey might not obey the delicate rules of diplomacy he'd been taught in the castle. The monsters he would come across might play dirtier than his opponents in sword training. In short, it would be the toughest thing he'd ever done.

Luckily, the spirit of adventure had always been strong in Prince Alfred F. Jones, so he was looking forward to it.

Now, Prince Alfred knew that he would have competition on his quest to find the princess. Damsels in distress were few and far between in this time of peace, so if any other princes were out looking to prove themselves fairy-tale style, then there weren't many options to begin with. Plus, this damsel granted wishes. It would only make sense that Alfred would run into another prince sooner or later.

He just didn't really expect it would be so soon: not even half an hour outside the walls of his kingdom's capital city, and still well within the boundaries of America.

"Excuse me. I know this might sound odd, but I was wondering if you had heard anything about a princess who grants wishes?"

Alfred jerked his white stallion, Hero, to a halt, and spun around in the saddle, trying to locate the owner of the voice with the strange accent. The question hadn't been directed at Alfred, but he heard it clear as day as he trotted happily past a farm in the beautiful American countryside.

"Sorry, your highness. Never heard of her."

"Oh, I see. Thank you, anyway."

Alfred urged Hero on a few feet, and there, just around the side of the farmhouse he'd been passing, was a prince. You could probably call him a handsome one – if you were into short blondes with good features, green eyes, nice posture and fancy clothes. He was just turning away, ready to get back into the saddle of his own black stallion, when his eyes rested on Alfred, staring at him from a few feet away.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, looking just as surprised as Alfred felt. "Do forgive me but you wouldn't happen to be Prince Alfred, would you?"

"Yeah," said Alfred, jumping out of the saddle and going to meet the newcomer.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, your highness," said the other prince, bowing low and coming back up with a smile. "I hope you don't mind my passing through unannounced. I shouldn't be here long, just collecting information to help me on my quest." Alfred nodded dumbly, as the other rambled on. "I'm looking for a princess who grants wishes. I know it sounds absurd, but I've had accounts from several reliable sources and – oh, do forgive me, I'm Prince Arthur of the Kingdom of England, by the way!"

He bowed again, and when he came back up this time, Alfred had come to a decision. A rather hasty decision, and one which wouldn't really help in the long run, but he was a little desperate. This was his princess, his quest, his adventure! He was not going to let it end some other prince take it from him before he even got started!

"You got a curse put on you, too, huh?" Alfred said. "I can tell – just look at those eyebrows! Geez, you musta really pissed off that witch for her to do that to your face."

Prince Arthur stared for a moment, completely at a loss. Alfred watched in amusement as the blank face before him grew pink and then red – colour blossoming from the cheeks outwards, like a flower unfurling. Soon the angry blush covered Arthur's whole face, and even his neck and ears.

To his credit, Arthur tried to keep control of himself.

"I'll have you know that my…the size of my eyebrows are a trait passed down through the Kirkland family. They are a sign of nobility where I'm from."

"Yeah, well, where I'm from, here in good ol' America, they're a sign of not owning a mirror."

And that was when the shouting started.

"You ill-mannered git! How very dare you! My eyebrows are no laughing matter you bloody wanker! Why don't you learn some sodding respect!" etc., etc. etc.

Alfred only laughed at the crazy English swear words raining down on him – they just sounded like nonsense words to him, so he couldn't find it in himself to feel too threatened. Plus, Prince Arthur shaking his fist at him with his red face and scrunched up eyebrows was just too funny.

Alfred grabbed the little golden crown off of Prince Arthur's head, and held it up high.

"Give that back!"

"No! That princess is mine! Let's see if she agrees to marry you if you don't have a crown to prove you're royalty!"

And with that, Alfred threw the crown over the farmer's fence. Arthur watched as it sailed through the blue sky, arching gracefully back towards the earth, and landed…splat in the mud of a pig sty.

Arthur stared, too dumbstruck to rage anymore, whilst Alfred cackled gleefully, racing back to Hero, leaping up into the saddle and galloping away. He knew Arthur would go wade through the mud to get his crown back (and the thought made him laugh harder) so he didn't want to waste this small head start.

Neither of them noticed Arthur's stallion whinny painfully as Hero rode away, and Alfred was too busy laughing to notice the struggle his horse put up as he was forced to leave the other two far behind.

Luckily for the horses, though, it wouldn't be too long before they met again.

A/N:

This story was inspired by a series of pictures by maiyeng, who is on Livejournal and tumblr. Please go check out the art to see the characters and the general idea of the story: maiyeng. tumblr post/ 19292638889/ 2-princes-attempt-to-rescue-a-princess-first-pic

(You know the drill: leave out the spaces hen you copy/paste the link.)

This was written for the USxUK LiveJournal community's Disney Summer Camp event. It was super fun, even though I was very busy during the entire event and didn't get to write as much as I wanted.

Each day there was a prompt based on a Disney song, so all the chapters of this story share titles with Disney music you may recognise.

The fanfic is already complete, so I'll be positng one chapter a day until it's all up.

Since this was written for an event with time limits, the chapters were pretty much churned out all in one go with very limited editing. I've done spellcheck, but I apologise for any other inconsistencies, errors or poor story-telling. I know that if I go back and try to rewrite it the way I want, I'll NEVER get it finished - so I'll just post what I originall wrote for the Summer Camp event.