Whew! This was quite the edit job, but I finally finished. As I mentioned last chapter (I think) I'm doing a complete overhaul of the story and setting it in a more serious tone since the last one was inappropriately humourous. Thankfully, I didn't have to do as much editing as I did with the first chapter... though the reason it took a long time to update was because I had other things to work on... and because I was kind of lazy.

Oh well.

At least I finally got it out, right?

Disclaimer: I do not own Diamond/Joker/Clover/Heart no kuni no Alice. Nor do I own the guest character who appears in the second part of the chapter.


Chapter Two

Discovering that you were a secret princess of a faraway land was something straight out of a fairy tale or a fantasy novel. The kind of thing that only happened in a really good piece of fiction. But as fantastical as it all seemed, it's been my reality for the past six years.

Six long years.

I was sixteen when I discovered my secret heritage and now I'm twenty-two.

For the first sixteen years of my life, I've always thought of myself as a normal girl. A normal girl who only had to worry about typical teenage drama and whether or not she should get a head start on her college and university applications. There was nothing else in my life that indicated otherwise.

Until one day I came home from school to find my house in flames.

Six years later the memory was fresh in my mind. Though I suppose that was natural since that day was when my life changed forever and I lost everything that ever mattered to me.

My home. My parents.

Everything.

In stories where the protagonist discover that they're magical princesses from fantasy lands or find themselves being sucked into a magical adventure, it's usually because there was some sort of magical portal in their toilet or because a magical animal is running from their home world that's being invaded and needs the help of the main character to save it.

There were no random portals or magical animals in my story.

My story had a much darker beginning.

Instead of fairies or magical jewelry being the introduction to the adventure of a life time, I was greeted by my home set ablaze and my dad decked out in dark armour and dying on the ground next to my mom. My mom... had already passed.

My dad was dying and it wouldn't have been long until he joined my mom, but he was able to stay alive long enough to tell me that he hadn't been entirely truthful about his past and his identity. In his dying moments, my dad confessed that he was the first born prince of the Alteria family.

The Alteria family who were the governing body of the all powerful Alter Race. Not only were they at the head of one of the most powerful races within the multiverse, but they also ruled over one of the realms: the Realm of Magic to be exact.

The Realm of Magic was a fantasy-like realm home to many creatures and races that most people considered fantasy and make-believe. It was a place of magic and where the so-called impossible happened.

It was a beautiful realm.

And my father was the one who was supposed to inherit it and the throne.

But something happened that no one saw coming; least of all him.

He met a Filipino woman named Alana Rivera.

My mom.

It was basically love at first sight for the two of them as cliche as it sounded. Dad was badly injured and had ended up on Earth, bleeding out and on the verge of death. My mom was returning from a late shift at her work and came across him while he was slowly bleeding to the death. Like the Good Samaritan she was until her death, she treated his wounds and looked after him while he was hospitalized.

Basically the Florence Nightingale syndrome.

My dad had the future of being ruler of the Alter race lined up for him, but he threw it all aside to spend the rest of his life with my mother. A few years later they had a single child: me.

Yulia Charlotte Alteria-Rivera.

Daughter and heir of Prince Caden Lucius Alteria and Alana Rivera.

Before he finally died my dad told me I was a princess and passed down to me the only two things he brought with him from his own world: his armour and the Alter national treasure the Mystic Sword, Godspell.

And then I was alone in a cold and cruel universe that would only continue to add to my grief and heartache.


Let me tell you that the Final Resort of Justice literally showing up on your door step is never a good thing. So you can imagine just how thrilled I was when he came out from behind the tree and revealed himself.

"...Darkbreaker." I exhaled, letting out a long sigh that I hoped would tell him just how happy I was about him being here. "It's been a while."

A word of advice from one person to another: do not mess with him. Doing that was a first-class ticket to getting yourself killed in a brutal matter. Or completely disintegrated that there was nothing left of you to bury.

Be polite and keep the sarcasm on the down low. Do not antagonize him in any way. Ask him why he approached you in the first place and fervently hope it's a task that won't take up too much of your time. Or that he needed to deliver something.

Final word of advice? Show some damned respect to the guy that the multiverse considers its' last resort in dealing with threats.

Guess I should probably describe him so you know who to look out for.

His outfit was easy enough to describe since he always wore the same thing during our encounters. I usually saw him wearing a midnight black jacket with its edges in jagged tatters. It covered a white, collared shirt. He also wore black gloves, but because he had a habit of stuffing them in the pockets of his pants, it was hard to see.

All in all he cut a depressing monochrome figure. In my opinion he needed to add a splash of colour to his ensemble to break the boring monotone of his trademark black-and-white outfit. But I also figured that what he wore was none of my business, so I kept my mouth shut on the matter.

However, if you looked closer, it turned out that the Last Resort of Justice wasn't just a black and white figure. Because hidden behind narrow, black shades, shadowed by a fringe of smooth, jet-black hair, were the man's eyes.

They -and you did not hear me admit this at all- were radiant.

His left eye burned gold and his right eye blazed crimson. They were the colours of the gentle sun and destructive fire.

To any multiversal wanderer (like me), the rumours made him unmistakable.

A monochrome shadow, the stranger whose age remained a mystery, sightings of whom abounded throughout the eons on multiple worlds, the ghost between light and the dark, crushing evil and injustice without remorse or pity.

Only ever mentioned in passing, he was only there if you knew where to look, hidden in the background behind the heroes and legends of the worlds he'd been to.

Never in the spotlight, but always, always a power to be reckoned with.

Tens of thousands of lifetimes in his wake, those cold eyes had seen civilizations rise, and worlds fall, often with his hand involved in one or the other, always pursuing justice, and his own unknown goal with a single-minded ruthlessness that often struck his allies as bordering on the cruel.

He was the greatest of allies...and the most terrible of enemies.

He was both salvation and destruction.

He was justice.

He was the nightmare.

He was the man they called Alexander.

Alexander J. Darkbreaker.

I only met him a few times in my relatively short life, but those few meetings were enough to last me a life time. He was a good ally to have if the fate of the universe was at stake. If you were ever in a life-and-death battle that determined the fate of multiple universes and all the worlds in it, you WANTED him on your side. The Darkbreaker being your enemy was a death warrant; the only thing you could hope for if you ever get to that stage was that everything in your Last Will and Testament was in order and that hopefully there was something left of you to bury.

"Not long enough." He gritted out.

Fantastic.

He sounded like he was in such a lovely mood, but I completely agreed with him there. His presence anywhere typically had the unfortunate side effect of Heralding Dark Things to Come.

Though I did not say this out loud as he had the ability to kick my ass across the universe and back.

Just... no.

"Do I want to know why you're even here?" I asked.

"Not really."

I let out a long sigh.

"Great."

If he didn't want to be in front of the dorm waiting for me, it was far from a good sign.

"It is a complicated matter." He said carefully.

A complicated matter. Why was it that whenever a complicated matter came up, they decided to summon me and not my much stronger cousins? Ugh. Why couldn't the multiverse send me something easy, for once? Why did I always have to deal with Fate of The Universe type matters?

As much as I hated it, the fact that the Powers That Be or whatever force that controls the multiple worlds or universes up there was sending for me meant that the situation was not entirely hopeless. I would be more worried if they were sending in the Darkbreaker since that meant that the situation was so bad that there was no way to fix it.

And that meant a permanent solution.

Which was not a good thing since a permanent solution usually meant that everyone and everything involved got destroyed as a way to cleanse everything and start anew.

"A complicated manner." I repeated. "Just how 'complicated' are we talking here?"

Knowing my luck it was going to be pretty complicated.

The last time he showed up it was to tell me that if my family and the other nobles didn't knock off the fighting soon, there would be a serious fall out that would result in a lot of death. Not just in our own world and among our own race, but the conflict would spread out to other worlds... and eventually other universes.

He also added that he would take care of the problem if we couldn't do it ourselves.

That had been a fun conversation.

The man left out a long sigh. "That is because it is a personal matter. A job left unfinished by Ceres." He paused before saying in a flat and emotionless tone, "It was the one that killed her."

I paused. The matter involved Ceres? And what he wanted me to do was fix the mess that killed her?

"If Ceres couldn't finish the job." I said slowly. "What makes you think I'll be able to?"

Ceres was one of the most powerful beings of her time. Even a thousand years after her death, her name was still spoken in whispers by those who knew of her or personally knew her when she was still alive. Unsurprisingly, she and the Darkbreaker used to be allies...or perhaps allies was maybe too strong a word.

If I had to really put into terms, it was more like two top level predators in nature crossing paths now and again, exchanging wary nods of acknowledgement and keeping one eye on each other till they were out of sight. The Darkbreaker never really was one for making friends, and his ruthless, almost extreme methods of ending the threat before him had earned him both respect and caution from even Ceres, who was kind to EVERYBODY. And I do mean that literally.

...needless to say, they could work together if the situation demanded it, but, well...I think they just sort of had a mutual agreement to disagree on some points.

Ceres always WAS accommodating like that.

She was also kind and very beautiful. Combined with her strength both physically and mentally, she could give any girl and woman in the universe a run for their money. Though she didn't mean to, Ceres had a habit of inducing feelings of insecurity into anyone of the female gender. Anyone in general, truthfully, if we were going to take into account just how insanely powerful she was, even for a member of her race.

Not much about Ceres' history was known other than the fact that she was a very powerful Alter and her accomplishments across multiple universes were vast. Far too many to count. Her younger brother, who was not as powerful as her but still very powerful in his own right, was the one to marry into the Alteria Royal Family and produce powerful offspring who eventually become my ancestors.

The Alteria family was distantly related to her, but I suspected that was not why Darkbreaker came to me in the first place. Ceres was much more deeply intertwined with my life than with theirs.

"Many of your race were killed when they combated this threat over a millennium ago." The man's voice was so cold that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. "It took out two universes and a quarter of the worlds in the third before the Alter, led by Ceres, were able to put a stop to them. But... at a steep cost."

I stared at him in disbelief. What?

"How many Alters were killed in this battle?" I asked, doing my best to keep my voice level.

Did I even want to know?

From personal experience, I knew Alters were insanely powerful to the point of unfairness to the rest of the universe. Not only were they blessed with super strength, but depending on their lineage they were also granted powers that ranged from mind control to creating earthquakes by simply stomping on the ground.

They were also crazy. But the kind of crazy that was never backing down from from a seemingly impossible downhill battle. Guess it came with the insanity of being all powerful. Members of the Alter race had the bad habit of turning the tables of a battle completely to their advantage.

However all of this had the unfortunate side effect of some Alters deluding themselves into thinking that because they were so powerful, that gave them the right to think they were better than everyone else. And in turn they should be the ones to rule the multiple universes and not just the Realm of Magic.

Not all of them thought this way and a number of the Altheria Royal Family rejected the view, but there were enough supporters to make the situation within the Realm tense between those who wanted to rule the universe and those who said that protecting it was enough.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I forgot who said that quote, but they were eerily accurate when they decided to toss out that piece of wisdom to society.

And then it all finally blew up when the previous king -my uncle, rest his soul- was assassinated.

"Wait, what?" I said when I realized that the Darkbreaker had said something and I completely missed it in contemplation of just how screwed up some of my dad's family and race were.

The man in question shot me a look. If you asked for my opinion on the matter he was giving me a look of disbelief- probably because I was ignoring him. Fair enough. Ignoring him usually wasn't done unless you weren't entirely there and incapable of sensing the dangerous aura the man gave off.

...did I mention that I was an Alter and that crazy came with the package?

"Um, continue." I hastily said to cover up the awkward silence that was beginning to settle in. I was all for awkward silences just to tick off the other party, but this guy?

No.

"Hundreds of Alters." I did not miss the dryness in his voice- either at the fact that I decided to zone out or because of the numbers. "Not including Ceres and the other casualties who got caught in the crossfire."

Ah.

... so whatever horror threatened everything back then had been pretty bad. The fact that it took down over a hundred of my race meant that these boogeymen were nothing to scoff at. Because hundreds of dead Alters meant millions of casualties for the other races and probably extinction for a couple of others.

And I still remembered his earlier words: two universes and a quarter of the worlds in the third.

"So what happened? If Ceres was involved then there's no doubt that she put an end to all the death and annihilation." Ceres would not have allowed two universes and a quarter of a third to be destroyed on her watch. Which made me wonder why she had let the collateral damage get so bad in the first place.

A dark chuckle made me look up.

"What?" I asked, not bothering to hide my annoyance.

"You were wondering why there was so much damage gone before she put an end to things."

I was not surprised he picked up on that. The Darkbreaker, in his words, knew everything. And if not everything, he usually knew more than everyone else.

"Well, yes." I raised an eyebrow at him. "Considering how her praises are being sung a thousand years later, you would think that she would have destroyed this threat way before it did that much damage."

Cue really awkward silence as he glowered at me. After a considerable amount of time had passed, Darkbreaker finally spoke again.

"You of all people know that Ceres was not invincible." His tone was bitter. He and Ceres had not exactly been...friends, so to speak. But there had been a certain rapport between them nonetheless, one adjudicator to another before her untimely death and there was no doubt in my mind that despite whatever moral or ethical differences they might have had, her death had definitely hurt him...a lot too, given the brief crack in his composure. "Her greatest accomplishments were recorded and passed down through out the generations, but only those. They did not speak of her failures, the burdens she carried, or the heart break she was forced to endure as their 'saviour'."

Guilt immediately washed over me and I looked down at the ground to avoid his accusatory gaze.

Yes, I did know. How could I not when our destinies were so intertwined together?

Ceres had been painted over as one of the greatest heroes to have ever existed. What most people forgot, however, was that she was a person too. A person who sacrificed everything in her life for the greater good.

...and one of the harshest examples of what that life entailed was standing right in front of me now.

"So what am I supposed to do?" I finally asked. "Assuming that you can tell me anything?"

Because destiny just loved throwing me into life threatening situations without much information to go on. I often had to do a lot of figuring out on my own whenever I was dropped into another world to complete whatever task the universe came up with. While I was not happy about being dumped in the middle of nowhere with no clue about anything, I was also pretty used to it.

"My job is just to give you a means to get to your destination... and to ensure that no harm comes to your body while you take care of things. Speaking of which, you have been transported to the hospital safely. The doctors are now trying to diagnose your unconscious form."

"Huh? What do you mean-"

Something inside me froze. He... wouldn't...

"How long?" I demanded. "How long have I been unconscious in the real world?"

A brief twitch at the corner of his lip was all that made it past his guarded expression, but that in itself told my sinking heart everything it needed to know.

"The entire time we were having this conversation." He did not bother hiding the amusement on his face this time, mismatched eyes glinting. "You just suddenly collapsed outside your dorm. Probably from exhaustion."

SON OF A-

I looked up just in time to see him standing right in front of me. He reached out, gently clasping a hand over my shoulder and then shoved me hard. As I fell backwards, I got the sense that there was nothing behind me to break my fall.

My suspicions were correct as the familiar sensation of free falling washed over me.

The last thing I saw were the blazing crimson and burning gold of Darkbreaker's eyes as he watched me fall.


For the record, I was going to get him back for this. The universe's Final Resort of Justice be damned.


"Wake up."

"..."

"I said wake up."

Every inch of my body ached and for some reason it was freezing. The only thing I wanted to do as of this moment was curl up into a ball under the warmth and comfort of my blankets. Without opening my eyes, I reached around to try and find my sheets only to grasp nothing but air.

Where were my blankets?

And since when was I rooming with a man? Last I checked the UBC dorms didn't allow people of the opposite gender to room together and I had been rooming with Tara Ben-

My eyes snapped open and I forced myself up.

Or at least I tried to.

Tara was dead. Last I checked, I was rooming by myself.

My body was so sore and my muscles screamed with even the slightest movement that I wondered for a minute if I had gotten hit by a truck while I was unconscious. Or fallen off some great height that was impossible for ordinary humans to survive. The latter certainly wouldn't be the first time.

"Guh...!" I winced, clutching my head and squeezing my eyes closed tight.

And on top of the aching muscles my head was killing me.

Fantastic.

With a grimace, I forced myself to look up. Might as well get a good look at the person who so rudely interrupted my blissful state of unconsciousness. If he had been an enemy, I highly doubt I would still be alive now. My reputation preceded me and any chance to catch me off guard was an opportunity to take advantage of immediately if you were my enemy.

Staring down at me was a tall man with long dark blue hair that was tied back with a yellow ribbon. He had a bit of a clock theme going on since he was wearing clock earrings and a third, pocket sized one like a necklace. And lastly, on his face, was an impressive scowl that told me he was anything but impressed with me and that he thought my existence was a nuisance.

"Hi." I deadpanned.

Already I could tell that I had my work set out for me.


And now Yulia has ended up in Wonderland! Care to guess who was the Wonderlander to greet her? I'll give you a hint: He's a grump who likes coffee!

And Darkbreaker is the one who belongs to DarkShiftRising. If you want more info on him and everything around him, check out Dark's Deviant Account: MagnumPhoenixZX and the Division-Omega group. Plenty of info there!

Don't forget to read and review! I would really appreciate it! More reviews and adding to your alerts and favorites means more love!