OH MY GOD! Thirteen reviews on one chapter, and that's not even counting all the favorites and story alerts! That would undoubtedly be a personal record! Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited, author/story alerted, or heck, even if you read it and nothing else, YOU ROCK! Thanks so much everyone!


THROUGH A LOOKING GLASS, DARKLY

Chapter Two: Armed And Dangerous

"Nice to meet you. I'm Shay." A young woman, probably in her early twenties, shook hands with Alice, then Hatter, smiling. She had long blonde hair that reached her about halfway down her chest, and clear blue eyes. She wore a pair of oddly pristine white jeans, black leather boots, a black studded belt, and a lightweight baby blue strapless top, as well as a thin white choker with a thick black line through its middle. She looked both very pretty and very dangerous. Not particularly black belt-dangerous like Alice, but pickpocket-you-mid-kiss kind of dangerous. Nevertheless, she was the only person the confused couple had run into so far, and she seemed nice enough.

"Alice," the black belt introduced herself politely.

"Hatter."

"Laconic." Shay raised an eyebrow, smiling. "You guys new around here? I've never seen either of you before."

"Yeah, we're from…" Alice trailed off, not sure how much to say. They'd only met her after all, and less than fifty words wasn't much to go on. Especially when most were just the introduction.

"Out of town." Hatter finished quickly for Alice, trying to sound as casual as possible.

Shay looked intrigued. "Really? Out of town? How far out of town? And more importantly," she stepped closer to Hatter, positioning herself only inches apart from his face. Looking him dead in the eye, she ran a finger mischievously around the brim of his hat. "Staying long?"

Beside her, Alice noticeably tensed. Shay caught the slight movement out of the corner of her eye and stepped back. "You're dating." She concluded matter-of-factly, not sounding embarrassed or apologetic at all. "Or you both like each other. Or you're in denial." She shrugged. "People do that."

"Dating." Alice told her firmly, instinctively stepping a bit closer to her boyfriend. "We're dating."

Shay nodded approvingly. "So, where 'ya headed? Maybe I can help?" The couple exchanged a quick glance, wondering how much was too much. The blonde girl caught it, and narrowed her eyes slightly, thinking. "You came from…that direction, didn't you?" she asked softly, glancing over their shoulders. "By the looking glass…" she jerked her head back to look at them suspiciously. "…Through the looking glass…"

Busted.

Reactions were instantaneous. Hatter whipped out a gun from the inside of his coat. Shay pulled one from her back pocket, and within seconds, both of them were pointing their weapons at each other, ready to fire at a moment's notice.

"Look, we don't want any trouble." Alice told the blonde, hoping to keep things from escalating any further.

Shay frowned, all hints of friendliness gone. "Hell, neither do I. So I suggest you tell me what you're doing here and what you want. Like, now."

"Hold on. What makes you think you're giving the orders here?" Hatter demanded loudly, glaring intently at the blonde girl before him.

Completely unnerved, Shay moved her hand to the right a few inches so that her gun was pointing at Alice. "She does." She answered calmly, the unveiled threat doing nothing to soften her suddenly steely, powerful voice. "See, all I have to do is pull the trigger, and then it doesn't matter if you shoot me, 'cuz you're girlfriend dies anyway." Shay shrugged coldly, uncaring. "Wanna see?" Hatter stepped defensively in front of Alice. "Oh. Well have it your way then. I'll just shoot you and your girlfriend can watch you bleed to death. It's all the same to me, really. Put the gun away, dimwit."

Picking up on her boyfriend's hesitation, Alice put a hand on his arm. "We have to trust somebody, Hatter."

"Yes, Alice. Let's trust the girl pointing a gun at us, that's the way to do it!"

"You really should listen to your girlfriend, love." Shay put in. "After all, when the choices are, 'keep pointing my gun and get shot' or 'put my gun away and don't get shot', I tend to go with the option that doesn't involve a tragic and painful death for either me or the person I care about most."

After a moment, Hatter complied. Because neither him nor Alice dying was very high on his to do list. Actually, it wasn't very low on his to do list, either. That was because he didn't have a to do list, but that is completely irrelevant to the plot.

"Okay then." Shay said softly, but didn't lower her gun. "So what're you doing here? No, wait, more importantly, how did you get here?"

"We came through the looking glass," Hatter said in a slow voice as though talking to a four-year old.

"Yes, Hatter. Let's taunt the girl pointing a gun at us, that's the way to do it!" Alice elbowed him in the stomach. And she had a point.

"Yeah. Got that. How'd you get through the looking glass? That thing hasn't worked for years, and the only way to get from Wonderland to Earth is with a ring that hasn't been seen in, like, over a decade."

"A ring?" Alice asked.

"Wonderland?" Hatter repeated, surprised.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say that too fast for you?" Shay scowled. "Yeah, Wonderland. Ring. Portal. Mirror. Are we done with the one-word guide to the painfully obvious?"

Ignoring her taunting, Hatter focused on the more serious side to the conversation. The side that didn't involve Shay's threatening, flirting, or her oddly Australian accent. "The ring. The Stone of Wonderland, right?"

"Yeah…no. No. The Light of Wonderland. Close, but no cigar, angel. Where the hell did you get 'Stone of Wonderland'?"

"From the real Wonderland, where, by the way, I happen to be from." Hatter told her, feeling rather proud of himself indeed.

Shay looked annoyed for a moment, but suddenly that no-it-couldn't-be face made its second appearance that day and she put her free hand to her forehead. "Oh my God. Oh wow." She groaned, sounding abruptly tired, like she'd had a very long day. Well, that was too bad for her, because it was only going to get longer. Well, not actually longer, because days are always twenty-four hours, but just metaphorically speaking…wait, you'd already figured that out, hadn't you? Clever little readers.

"What?" Alice asked, surprised by Shay's sudden change in behavior. Hatter took a slightly different (read: violent) approach. Let's check the dictionary, shall we? Ah, there it is. 'Different. Dif-er-ent. Taking advantage of Shay's momentary distraction to knock the gun out of her hand and twist her arm behind her back painfully, causing her to drop to her knees on the ground. Synonym: effective. Antonym: Waiting patiently for the nice, gun-toting, threat-making girl to explain.'

…This…this is a strange dictionary.

"Tell us about the Light of Wonderland." Hatter demanded, apparently completely missing the significance of the look on Shay's face when she'd gotten distracted enough for him to get the upper hand.

Shay snorted. "Would you look at that? Puppy's got a mean streak."

Noticeably annoyed by that comment, and rightfully so, Hatter kicked the blonde in the back, which, when you thought about it, was the lesspainful alternative considering, that she was on her knees. Pretty much the only other kickable place was the back of her head. But kicking someone in the back of their head usually causes brain damage or unconsciousness, neither of which would've helped him and Alice at all. Like bursting into song and having their own musical right then and there, only even less accommodating, which was very hard to do, considering that singing about somewhere over the rainbow or walking through the fire tended to both attract the bad guys and occasionally be annoying. You know, just occasionally. 'Cuz most of the time spontaneous professional-looking choreography paired with everyone's suspiciously brilliant vocals for a spur of the moment, completely unrehearsed breakaway pop hit is usually such a wonderful thing to behold…I'm sorry, what were we talking about again?

Oh. Oh, yeah.

Shay let out a sort of pained gasp, but simply snarled unhelpfully, "Screw you, puppy. I do nothingon command." She pushed herself up onto just her knees, getting the rest of her body off the ground, and forcefully straightened both of her legs. Her feet slammed into Hatter's stomach, knocking him backwards. Shay stood up, swinging her leg up in roundhouse kick that barely missed connecting with Hatter's face. Not giving up yet, the blonde grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled her knee up into his stomach.

"Hatter!" The brunette moved to intervene, but Hatter held up a hand, stopping her.

"Hang on, Alice. I got this one." And, to prove his point, he aimed a very close-ranged punch and hit his challenger square in the jaw.

Shay stepped back, hand flying to her pained jaw. "You little…" she murmured before spitting out a mouthful of blood. Suddenly, surprisingly, a small smile crept onto her lips. "Not bad." She said softly, then crossed her arms in front of her chest. "So you're from Wonderland?"

For a moment, Hatter seemed unsure as to whether or not he should continue the fight, however, he simply nodded and said, "Yeah. Why?"

Shay sighed. "Okay look. There's your Wonderland, and there's my Wonderland. There's her Earth," she added, gesturing to Alice as she retrieved her gun. "And then there's an alternate Earth that, presumably, none of us have ever been to. But it still exists. Somewhere out there, there is an alternate copy of every person, every place, everything. Now, most of the time, every world stays relatively cut off from the others, however, they're all linked through mirrors. But most portals require some sort of trigger to open. Like," she took a deep breath, as though having trouble believing what she was about to say. "The Stone of Wonderland and the Light of Wonderland. The fact that they're both rings is purely coincidental. Point is, their respective looking glasses aren't gonna work without them."

Alice and Hatter stared at each other for a moment. Then another moment. Then a couple more, taking it all in. "All right," Alice managed eventually. "You're saying that there's an alternate version of everything somewhere in some world?"

"Everything, everyone." Shay confirmed, nodding.

"And we just happened to turn up in alternate Wonderland?" Hatter asked skeptically. "Now what're the odds of that?"

"They're not the best, I'll admit, but I'm pretty sure about this, and I wouldn't lie to…well, okay, I undoubtedly would, but I'm not lying now." Shay said seriously, apparently forgetting for a moment that openly admitting that you would, without a doubt, lie to someone does not improve your believability much. Actually, it sort of destroys all traces of it. Catching Alice's disbelieving look, Shay sighed. "For God's sake Alice, your boyfriend is supposed to be a fictional character in a story that disturbs children of all ages! And what's more, it was written by the guy that invented the word 'snicker-snack'! Snicker-snack! What the hell kind of a word is that?" Technically, it's an onomatopoeia, Shay.

Alice frowned, and then softly admitted, "Good point." Nobody could argue with 'snicker-snack', after all.


I UPDATED! ...but you already knew that, didn't you? Seriously, you can't argue with 'snicker-snack'. Go on. Try. On second thought, screw arguing with it and just SAY it, for Pete's sake! 'Snicker-snack'! Come on!

So, anyway, we have a new character. I wanted Shay to be kind of weird and have sort of a love/hate thing with Hatter, but what do YOU think of her, the story so far, and of the chapter? That's what I care about. Okay, well I'm about done, so if you would be so kind, please press that goregous button at the bottom of the page and tell me what you thought!

...and my God, Kelsey, you REALLY can't spell.