Beside the statue of Hachiko in Shibuya, an spiky-haired boy with questionable fashion sense listens to music. He opens his blue eyes and squints at the sun, then at his watch. He sighs and looks to his left.

"Huh?!" He bolts upright. Dammit, where did Piggy go? His eyes dart from figure to figure, face to face, object to object in the crowd, and he begins to panic.

There! He spots the black stuffed cat in the mouth of something fluffy . . . a rabbit? Whatever it is, he chases after it, but the creature is surprisingly fast. It springs past the west bus exit terminal and into the station underpass. Neku has to push and shove people out of his way, which only adds to his irritation. That stupid rabbit is going down. Ruin his day—

"I'm late!"

The words echo through the underpass. Neku looks around, but he must be hearing things. That sounded a lot like her, but she was nowhere in sight. Neku narrows his sights once more at his current mission: Get the cat and kill the rat—rab . . . bit . . . Ah, hell, it sounded better before he thought it, okay?

He hesitates for less than a blink when the rabbit hops into what would be the path to the Shibuya River if this were the Underground. But he is here in the Realground, so what could possibly go wrong?

Neku follows the rabbit down.

He will come to regret this decision.

"I'm late! I'm late!" the rabbit squeals, all the while growing larger.

"Hey!" Neku shouts. The ground is yanked from under him and rotated—what was forward is now down. Neku yells until he realizes he's falling at half-speed. Weird. After figuring he might not be facing certain death, he dives for the rabbit, which has now grown to a human size.

"I'm late!" she cries, looking at the paw that wasn't clutching the stuffed cat.

"She?" Neku questions himself aloud. But the rabbit did have a female voice, and a very familiar one at that. And then that pinkish fur—

Neku painfully hits the ground. He curses and mumbles to himself, which he seems to do quite often. Distracted by his dialogue with himself, he doesn't notice the rabbit-girl getting to her feet and approaching him until she grabs his arm.

"Come with me," she says, already dragging him.

"Wah-what now?" Neku tries to pry open her grip. "I don't think so."

She pouts. "But you have to. If you wander here on your own, you'll die."

This is starting to sound familiar to our hero. . . . "And where is here?" Neku looks at the area: a forest, only everything, from the trees to the blades of grass beneath his feet, is made of metal. "This isn't the UG. . . ."

Rabbit-girl gives him a look. "Duh. It's Wonderland. Now hurry up and come with me." She starts to pull him down a shiny path again, but Neku firmly plants his feet.

"No."

Rabbit-girl pulls harder. "Come. On! We don't. Have. Time!" With surprising strength, she yanks Neku out of his spot and starts tugging him along the path.

"Stop! Where are you taking me? What do you want from me?"

"I need—" the rabbit girl is cut off by a giant evil toad. "Crap," the rabbit whines. She turns to Neku. "Fight with me."

"What?"

"Here's a pin." She tosses him a small disk. It has the design of a gray skull over a pink heart on a rainbow background.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

"Baaattle!" the rabbit-girl cries, and she's off. She throws Piggy at the monster and hides behind a steel tree.

"I thought you said you wanted me to fight with you!" Neku yells at her, but the giant monster toad is on the attack. The toad rushes after Neku. Neku curses and barely manages to dodge. He looks at the pin still in his hand. What the hell am I supposed to do with this? Stab him with it? But then, suddenly, Neku knows exactly what the pin is for. Neku lifts his hand and shoots laser beams at the toad. Three hits and it's gone.

The rabbit-girl hops out from behind the tree and picks up Piggy. "Wow, that was great! You're, like, a psych pin genius!"

No thanks to you. Neku turns around and starts walking the opposite way the rabbit was trying to drag him.

"Hey, where are you going?"

Away from you. Neku doesn't know where he is, but he is determined to find a way out. Surely he can find his way out . . . maybe he is in the Underground again somehow . . . some weird, twisted version of it, anyhow. . . .

"No! This way!" The rabbit-girl grabs him again.

Neku shrugs her off. "Leave me alone! I'm not about to follow some furry's dream down a shiny path that probably leads to my doom. No thanks, I choose my own path, thanks. Alone."

The rabbit-girl wrinkles her nose. "Oh, sorry, where are my manners? Names! I'm Usagi-Shiki."

Something about her name, along with her voice and her appearance, seems really familiar to Neku . . . Aaand he's back to not caring. He keeps walking.

"Hey!" Usagi-Shiki cries after him. She hops over his head and stands in the middle of his path. "Your turn."

"Can you move?"

"Not until you tell me your name."

Neku sighs. "Tarō Yamada."

Usagi-Shiki giggles. "Silly Neku. You think I'd believe a generic name like that?"

It was worth a sho—Hey, wait a sec. "You just used my name."

Usagi-Shiki gives him a weird look. "Well, yeah, Neku. You feeling all right?"

"But why waste time asking me for my name if you already know it?"

"What are you talking about? I never did that."

Looks like the girl cosplaying as a rabbit in the woods is crazy after all. Should have called it. "Whatever. See ya." Neku walks around her, but stops in his tracks.

Everything is pink. Every shade of pink possible, the scene painted in some sort of pink-scale. Not only that. He is on a thin mountain path overlooking cotton-candy waves of prairie grasses and distant splotches of magenta trees in the distance.

"What. The hell."

Usagi-Shiki tilts her head. "I wouldn't have asked for your name only to use it in the next sentence. Well, maybe if I was, like, distracting you from noticing something impossible happening or something, but since it would be impossible for something impossible to happen, I would never do that."

Neku just looks at her. ". . .You're trying to tell me something, aren't you."

Usagi-Shiki strikes a weird, extremely exaggerated shocked pose. "N-no, n-nothing at all! Heh . . . heh, silly."

Neku rolls his eyes. "Glad that's settled." Neku winces at the pinkness of everything. Must. Resist. Urge. To paint it black. "So, what's up with the change in scenery?"

"What are you talking about? We've been here the entire time." Right. And I'm not resisting the urge to run screaming from this hellhole and find a nice, dark corner to emo in. Usagi-Shiki looks at her hand and makes her shocked pose once again. "I'm late! I mean, we're late! Come on, we gotta go now!" Yet again she grabs him.

"Okay, what is your deal?" Neku asks, exasperated.

"My deal? It's your deal too! Your head's on the line just as much as mine!" She looks at her hand again. "Eep! Twenty-three minutes! We got to book it!"

As much as Neku would love to ignore her and walk away stoically, his mind wrapped up in more important matters like emoing, this chick's grip is iron tight. Which is even more impressive when you realize she doesn't have thumbs. So it looks like he'll have to deal with it. Sigh. "Where exactly are we booking to?"

"Don't you check your MentalMail?" Shiki gives him a look. What is this girl on? So I know to never go near it. . . . "The castle, duh. Rivière del Valley-Shibu."

Neku counts at least four languages getting butchered. "What kind of stupid name is that?"

Usagi-Shiki poses in shock. "Wha—H-how dare you say something so rude about the Queen's palace! Y-y-you're just lucky I need you to survive! O-otherwise, n-no way could I stand for such b-blasphemy!"

Neku crosses his arms. "You got some kind of speech impediment?"

"N-no! I mean, no!" Usagi-Shiki stamps her foot. "Look, we have twenty-one minutes to get to the castle or we're done for!"

"Maybe you're done for," Neku argues. "I never made plans to have tea with the queen, and I owe you nothing, so bye."

"Neku!"

Neku turns back around. "Look, I don't know you. I don't know where I am. All I know is I'm getting off this crazy train, all right? By myself. So you deal with your problems and I got mine, okay?"

"Wait," Usagi-Shiki calls after him. Neku hesitates. "How about if you come with me to the castle, I'll show you the way out of here?"

"I don't need your help."

"You said yourself that you don't know where you are . . . and I do. I know Wonderland pretty well. There's no way you can make it out of here without some help, and you'll just get attacked if you go alone."

"I can handle myself. I took out that giant toad, no thanks to you."

Usagi-Shiki appears shocked again. "What?" She stomps her foot. "Mr. Mew helped a ton!"

"Throwing your stuffed pig at it helped me? Really?"

"It's a cat! A maaagical stuffed cat!"

"Magical?" Neku repeats.

"Yeah, asshole, I'm pretty damn fantastic." Who said that? Neku looks for the source of the rough, vulgar voice. "And you better be thankin' your mama's lucky stars that I helped out a lucky piece a' shit like you, hater."

What the—Neku points at the pig. "D-did you say something?"

"Hell yeah, retard."

"I told you," Usagi-Shiki says. "He's maaagical."

Magical, my ass. Did this chick slip me something? "Okay. I'm out of here."

"No, Neku! Mr. Mew was just playing around. He'll be nice."

"Yeah, 'll be real nice, ya pansy. A few little big-boy words and he goes runnin' scared. It's okay, little baby, I won't use any big bad words no more."

Yeah. I'm out.

"Neku!"

Just then, another giant toad leaps in front of them, along with a weird bird.

"More Noise!" Usagi-Shiki exclaims. "C'mon, Mr. Mew—"

"No, no, leave this to Big-Shot here," Mr. Mew says. "Show him how much he really needs us."

"I don't need you," Neku says.

"Good, then take 'em out no problem for us. You get 'em, we won't bug you anymore."

"Mr. Mew! We need him," Usagi-Shiki says low.

Mr. Mew scoffs. "Cupcake, you really think he can succeed on his own?"

"Well . . . no, but—"

"Great." Mr. Mew speaks up. "So, whataya say, kid?"

"You're on." Neku braces himself for the attack.

Everything goes black.

A/N: Neku's in Wonderland? And he conveniently loses his memory of anything about the Game and his friends? Wha?

Yeah, I didn't put this in the crossover section because it's not Alice's Wonderland and the characters are a bit different, but based on a few from the story. Shiki's the White Rabbit, Neku's Alice, and Mr. Mew . . . I don't really know what he is. Just a big bundle o' fun, am I right? But if you think I should label it a crossover after all, let me know.

Just a few little notes: In case you were wondering, usagi is rabbit in Japanese. Tarō Yamada is the Japanese equivalent to John Smith. The female version is Hanako Yamada. And as for the castle's mixed up name, Neku wasn't kidding about four languages getting screwed with. Rivière (French, River) del (Spanish, of the) Valley-Shibu (English + Japanese). Literally, Shibuya River (the ya of Shibuya means valley). And now you know. Yay!

Reviews are welcomed and appreciated, even if they're negative. Next chapter should be up in a week or so. See you then!