Alright, so I'm not much of a BloodxAlice shipper, but after I wrote Learn to Fly, a reviewer said that it could be interesting to see a one-shot in which each of the different Role-Holders ends up with Alice and is put in a similar sort of situation. I felt this might be an intriguing and fun project to do, and plus: it means everyone who ships a different thing will be happy too! Also, this is Jabberwocky!Alice. :3 Please leave a review or two! :D
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/*\
Blood had been working in his office the first time it happened. He'd been sitting at his desk scratching signatures into the vast amounts of paperwork - after many years of being the Mad Hatter, he still couldn't believe there was this much - when Elliot had poked his head in through the door.
"Hey Blood," He said, "I know I'm not supposed to bug you while you're working, but for the past few days, someone's been stealing the flower vases in the hallways. The maids are starting to get upset." Blood raised an eyebrow. Normally he'd be annoyed, but...of all the things in the mansion to steal, someone risked their life for a vase? No, that couldn't be right.
"Sorry?" He answered, "You said someone's stealing vases?" Elliot nodded,
"Yup. They're stealing the flower vases. The flowers and the water are there, but the vases are nowhere to be found. They just keep disappearing. The faceless are getting a little frustrated."
"It's probably the twins playing a prank. Deal with it."
"I would if it wasn't for the fact that the twins have been running errands in town since last week. They haven't been here." Blood was a little befuddled.
"...Why would someone steal the vases?"
"Who knows? I just know that the servants want instructions and demanded I ask you about it."
"...Handle it however you see fit." Elliot nodded and left the room, and the Mad Hatter resumed his work.
Well.
That was certainly different.
/*\
The second time, Blood had been reading a book that Alice had given him. It wasn't particularly interesting, and he was quite bored with it, but he needed the information presented in the pages. He'd finally finished the paperwork - and too lazy to actually walk to his room - sat down on the plush purple couch in his office, and had gotten approximately three paragraphs in when, once again, there was a knock on the door.
"Hey Boss!" A young-sounding voice called,
"Come in," The Mad Hatter answered, marking his page, a little annoyed. "What do you want?"
"Well here's the thing..." Dee trailed off, clearly reluctant to explain their presence. This alone intrigued the Hatter. They usually only came to him if they were confident that their news or request would be well received.
"Someone managed to steal our axes." Dum continued, "We don't know how, we don't know why, but we've been unable to find them for three days. We'd like to ask permission to commission new ones from the blacksmith in town." For a moment Blood thought they were joking, but then both twins hung their heads dejectedly, clearly ashamed of themselves. The Mad Hatter did not stifle his laughter.
"Sure, take as much time as you need, but you have to pay the blacksmith with your own money." And then they began to whine about the unfairness of it all. "Either you pay yourselves, or you take Elliot with you." That stopped them in their tracks.
"See ya later boss!" Dee said, and they were gone.
Still laughing Blood decided he'd tell Elliot regardless, and resumed his reading.
/*\
The third time, another Role-Holder was the victim. "Ha! Stupid sissy chickie rabbit!" Dum crowed as the Mad Hatter sat at his outdoor tea table.
"Yeah, you can't tease us anymore because they stole your weapon too!" And the twins laughed maniacally as Elliot, his ears flattened and absolutely radiating frustration, took his place at Blood's right, carving out a slice of carrot cake.
"So your favorite gun is gone?" The Hatter questioned, still holding his teacup.
"How are they doing this?" He growled, shoveling food into his mouth. Well, that answered his question.
Blood was both amused and worried. If someone had managed to steal the preferred weaponry of his three most deadly employees...
He needed to figure out what was going on.
Soon.
/*\
After the fourth incident, Blood could no longer put off the issue. He'd walked into his office - he'd left for approximately two minutes - and found that the ruby topping his cane had vanished. He examined the walking stick carefully. The gem had been extracted in a very professional manner, there was but one scratch from the knife that had pried the jewel from it's spot.
"Alright," he said aloud, "This has to stop." It had been clear since the twin's loss that they were not dealing with an amateur. However there was no rhyme or reason to this person's actions. They weren't stealing valuables, and they hadn't made any attempts on the lives of the Role-Holders.
Blood knew that this was a trivial matter, and most likely just a harmless prank, but he couldn't keep letting this go on. Each and every one of his subordinates were perturbed by the thefts, and now they'd even managed to take something from him.
If it continued, the Hatters would be the laughing stock of all the crime syndicates.
That was when the door of his office got pushed in.
"Dad?" A tiny voice spoke. Oh no. If Lily showed up...
"Did someone take your things too?" He immediately asked, a little worried.
If this person had decided to steal from his five-year-old daughter, nothing would save them from the torture chambers underneath the mansion. She tilted her head, and scrunched up her eyebrows, clearly puzzled by the question.
"No." She answered, and her father exhaled in relief, "Is that why everyone's freaking out?"
"Yes, it is. Someone is playing a very bad prank." She stepped further into the office, curious.
"They're taking things?" She inquired, and Blood nodded. "Weird, anyways, I was just coming to tell you that Mom is here. She's gonna take me back to the tower soon." And Blood remembered. That's right, it was the end of the week, so Alice was going to take Lily back to Jabberwocky Tower for a little bit. Good. That would allow him little more free time to find the thief.
Blood approached his daughter and picked her up, mindful of her tail and the silver wings tucked into her back. She in turn was careful not to let her talons tear through his clothes or skin.
"Let's go say hi." he said, and walked out of the office to the front of the mansion.
/*\
Alice was talking to Elliot, and after getting some of the specifics of the "prank" that was being so skillfully played on the inhabitants of the mansion, she had to stifle her laughter. She knew exactly what was going on - the same thing had happened at the tower not too long ago - and she couldn't wait until Blood figured it out. Her husband was an obnoxiously prideful man, it would do him some good to be taken down a notch or two.
Especially since he clearly hadn't read the book she gave him.
/*\
"Alice," Blood greeted, lightly pecking his wife on the lips, "How's your week been?" She smiled at him.
"It's been alright. I had to do three different territory negotiations with Gowland in the past four days, but other than that it's been quite pleasant, and you?" Unknowing that Elliot had already told Alice everything, he started explaining about all the things that were going missing in the mansion. Lily had quickly gotten bored with the discussion, and so had retreated to her room to get some of the things she wanted to bring back to the tower.
"It makes no sense," He stated, "This thief is clearly not an amateur, but they're stealing worthless objects." Alice decided she wanted to play along,
"You said they stole Elliot's and the Twin's weapons?" she asked, and Blood nodded, "I ran into Ace on my way here. He got lost in the woods again, and he said that someone took his sword while he was asleep."
"They must be good if they can even ransack that insufferable knight." Alice giggled, and prodded a bit more.
"Do any of these lost objects have anything in common?" Blood had actually thought about this.
"Well-" and then he was cut off by a panicking faceless.
"Boss!" The man had cried, and momentarily placed his hands on his knees, panting. Clearly he had run the entire way to the front of the mansion, and Blood had a feeling that this did not bode well. "The vault...has been...raided...they stole two hundred gold doubloons." He got out in between pants.
Oh yes, Alice was definitely going to have some good entertainment for the next few hours.
/*\
By this point, the Hatter was furious. Each and every servant was temporarily to ignore their other duties and they were instructed to hunt down the missing gold. They were not to eat, sleep, or even use the bathroom until all the coins were found and accounted for. Alice followed Blood a few steps behind, mindful of her tail so that she didn't trip any of the running servants.
After four hours, the one-hundred-some-odd faceless workers had thoroughly searched every single room in the house, the surrounding buildings and even in the torture chambers that the Hatter was very careful to keep secret from his young wife and daughter. Not a single coin had been recovered, and Blood was getting very, very upset.
"How is this happening!?" The twins shouted, while Elliot was tearing up all the spare bedrooms for the second time. Blood started pacing the hallway.
"What is going on?!" He growled. Up until now the thief had shown absolutely no interest in the assorted treasures hidden within the mansion. What was this person doing?! Alice, having had her fun, intervened.
"There is one place we haven't looked." She stated, grabbing everyone's attention.
/*\
Blood was quite puzzled when Alice led the Mafia quartet to Lily's room.
"Why would it-?" He started to ask when Alice lifted a finger to her lips. Be quiet. Even more confused, he watched as his wife opened the door and silently walked in. Equally careful, the Hatter and his subordinates did the same, and he realized his daughter wasn't there. Where had she gone? He was going to ask when he watched the dragon-woman slowly open Lily's closet door. Peeking inside he saw...Lily. Sleeping. On top of a pile of two hundred gold coins.
/*\
The Hatter couldn't find it in himself to be mad. The little girl's set up was simply too impressive. She had removed each and every article of clothing from her walk-in closet. The twin's battle-axes were centered on the back wall, criss-crossed in an ornamental fashion, Elliot's gun and the Hatter's ruby sitting on a shoe-shelf-turned-pedestal underneath them. In the middle of the small space rested the coins mixed with currency and random bits of steel and iron, carefully piled around - wouldn't you know it - Ace's sword, the heart emblem glinting harshly in the light emanating from the vases the child had used as torches.
She had set up four of the vanished flower-holders as pillars, standing at each corner around the gold heap. It looked as though she'd used them as containers for her glittery blue dragon-fire, only destructive when she willed it to be.
In front was the most interesting piece of the display. Approximately twenty vases had been taken, and the remaining sixteen, plus a water bucket, plus a length of curved metal pipe had been used to create a tall fountain. The only sound was the water trickling from vase to vase, as the adults were trapped in a state of awe.
"She did all this?" The Hatter murmured, his gaze resting on the little girl who had curled herself oh so carefully around the blade stuck in the middle of her gold pile, her long raven-black hair completely covering her face. Alice nodded, "Even the fountain?" Alice sighed,
"Look," she pointed, and there was one of the Hatter's books, hidden on the top shelf. Everything to Know About Engineering. "Dragons tend to learn things far faster than humans, and shortly after they start walking and talking, they become entranced by shiny things. Being so young, she hasn't yet learned to suppress the instinct to hoard, nor can she tell the difference between valuable and non-valuable metals. Had you read the book I gave you, you would know that." She finished, feeling simultaneously smug and irritated. She'd given him that book a month ago. He ought to have finished it by now.
"How did you know it was in the closet?" He questioned, Alice shrugged.
"She has a pile of silver, one of iron, and one of bronze at the Tower." she stated, "It started like it did here. Things randomly went missing. I found my letter opener and my crown stuck in her coin stash- Don't do that!" She broke off.
Blood had gone to wake the little girl, but the moment he nudged her shoulder, she jumped up, her jade eyes turning blue as the pupils slit, and she growled at him, seemingly unable to recognize that this was her father. He pulled his hand back before she bit him.
"So why did little sis's eyes turn color?" The twins inquired of Alice, and she turned to him, smiling as though Blood hadn't almost just lost his hand.
"Like I said, she hasn't learned to suppress certain instincts yet. If something in her brain tells her that her treasure stash is in danger, she'll go into full dragon mode. She won't recognize you."
"That's scary," Elliot muttered, as Blood backed away from Lily. Alice approached her daughter.
"Lily," she murmured, and the little girl tilted her head, her pupils starting to dilate, though they were still ice-blue. "Lily," she repeated, "It's mommy." And the child grasped onto the hilt of the sword and blinked a few times, trying to hold herself up. Her eyes had turned their normal shade of green again, and she looked confused,
"Mom?" She squeaked, "What are you doing here? I wasn't done making my cave yet." She whined, and Alice laughed. She was about to say something when Blood knelt next to her. On an intellectual level, he had always known that he and his daughter more different than she and his wife, and not just because he was not female. He was human, his daughter was a dragon. She was different in ways he could never relate to, and so he made sure his question had absolutely nothing to do with the human standards of child-rearing.
"Lily Flower," He only ever used the nickname when he was either worried or trying to restrain some sort of negative emotion. Alice raised an eyebrow at him, daring him to be mean to the child when he hadn't even tried to understand what was going on. "When you came into my office earlier, and I told you why the servants were upset, why didn't you tell me it was you taking everything?" She tilted her head at him, as though the answer should have been quite obvious.
"You didn't ask." She responded, before laughing and jumping into her mother's arms, asking when they'd go to the Tower.
Of all the things she could have inherited from him, it just had to be the loophole sense of humor.
/*\
So what did you guys think of that? I feel like it kind of serves Blood right, to get so heavily trolled by his own kid. Also, the reason they're having Lily go back and forth between the Tower and the Mansion is because, even though they're happily married, they can't really live together because of their Roles. Alice needs to remain in her territory just like Blood has to stay at the mansion. Please, leave a review and tell me if you'd like to see more stories like this! :3
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