[Neo Zone] Population: 23 Kids

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

The cafe was too void of helpers to not be suspicious. They weren't exactly needed since the adults had it under control, but it was still strange.

"Where's my son?" Mrs. Suh asked, taking out a tray of scones from the oven.

"Right here." Johnny answered, having been running the register the whole time.

"No, the other one."

"Xiaojun? He's in the basement. Haechan's making everyone participate in his school project."

"Oh, then I'll leave him be."

Xiaojun had been adopted roughly four years ago by the Suhs, and everyone often forgot he was now technically Johnny's brother by law. It didn't help he had decided to keep his birth surname either.

"Johnny! We need our parrot!" Haechan shouted up the stairs, not caring that he was working and there were people in the cafe.

"That sounds important, you better go help him." Mr. Suh took over the register as Johnny sighed, hanging up his apron on one of the many hooks.

"Why are we doing this?"

"Because for my school project we had to take a fairy tale and make it our own. So I'm doing Barbie's version of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Besides, if I don't do a video, I have to do an essay." Haechan explained, tossing Johnny a hat he had found.

The original Twelve Dancing Princesses by the Grimm Brothers involved the twelve princesses sneaking off into the woods every night and killing the princes that were sent to retrieve them with a prize of marrying one of the girls. That was the version Renjun wanted to do, but the Barbie version had a lot more characters in it and Haechan loved the soundtrack.

The Barbie version had the King's cousin coming into the castle to teach the princesses how to be proper, so they find a magical world and dance all night there. There's a lot missing in both of those summaries, but that's the gist of it.

"Okay, but why am I the parrot?"

"You were going to be Derek, Princess Genevieve's love interest and the cobbler, but then I decided that would be Jaehyun because he has a nice face. So you're his parrot that makes sarcastic comments the whole time."

"Well then who's Genevieve?"

"I am." WinWin said with a sigh, really wishing he wasn't the main character. But Haechan's reasoning had been because he was a really good dancer, and he fit the personality.

"At least you don't have to be twins with Chenle and finish his sentences." Renjun muttered.

"Shut up, it's fun." That earned Chenle an almost strangling until Kun broke them up.

Chenle and Renjun were playing Hadley and Isla, only one of the sets of twins. Hendery and Xiaojun had the other set, Delia and Edeline respectively. And Shotaro, Sungchan and Jisung had Janessa, Kathleen and Lacy, in that order.

"If we're doing your version of the tale, why didn't you change the names?" Doyoung asked, having been stuck with the role of Duchess Rowena's butler, Desmond.

"Because that was too much work. So here's how this is going to go," Haechan then went on to explain what he called the more realistic version of the tale, giving everyone brief directions as to how it would be filmed at the same time.

When the King (Taeil) invites his cousin, Duchess Rowena, (Haechan) to turn his daughters into proper princesses, she immediately starts drugging him to kill him off. Except she accidentally puts too much in and kills him in one go.

So, Duchess Rowena instructs her servant, Desmond, (Doyoung) to lock the princesses (Taeyong, Ten, Kun, Hendery, Xiaojun, Jaemin, WinWin, Chenle, Renjun, Shotaro, Sungchan and Jisung) in their room until she can cover up the murder with the help of the ultra sketchy Fabian (Yuta).

The Princesses then end up finding the magical pavilion with the gold and silver flowers where they dance the night away, and they stay there for days. When the murder has been successfully covered up so it looked like perfectly natural causes and documents were forged so Duchess Rowena would be Queen instead of the eldest princess, Ashlyn, (Taeyong), the princesses were then discovered to be missing and a search party was sent for them.

Derek, the royal cobbler, (Jaehyun) and his parrot Felix (Johnny) then find the entrance to the magical pavilion by the help of Twyla, the cat the princesses left behind (Jungwoo). Derek then warns them of what Duchess Rowena had been doing, and the princesses decide it's better to stay in the pavilion where they can dance instead of going back to the real world, and there they remain for the rest of time.

And because Derek and Genevieve (WinWin) are the love interest of the story, nothing ever happens between them because Genevieve has all of her sisters around her 24/7 and they remain awkward. In the spin off series the princesses go feral and kill each other.

The production of course included appearances of Duchess Rowena's monkey, Brutus (Mark), the royal butler (Jeno), and the guards (Lucas and YangYang).

The short film was only thirty minutes long by the time it was edited, but it took four hours to film because everyone kept laughing. However the dance scenes were on point and were by far the highlight of the film. A close second was Johnny's parrot impression.

Haechan's teacher didn't even know where to begin on grading it, especially since most of the projects they had been given were modern a retelling and not just a mix between the original and the Barbie with a twist. Though an eighty-five didn't seem too bad for having skipped out on an essay.