Hello hello~! I am so sorry for abandoning this story, since ever since I updated my original first chapter, I had no idea how to go from there and I really wanted to write the story out until the end, so I reworded the first chapter a bit, although the main points of the first chapter is still there. So before the second chapter begins, here are some answers to your reviews:

InnocentDiamond: Thank you for your review~! I myself don't really see a connection with Robin Hood...but I am curious, though, what makes it sounds similar to Robin Hood? Hmm...if you want to know if Klaus is going to be in the story...I guess you'll just have to read to find out then. (*＾∀ﾟ)ъ

Guest: Thank you so much! (•‿•)

Queen of Hearts and Spades: Thank you for your support! (o^^o)

animelover6798: Thank you for your encouraging words! ≧ω≦

If Destroyed Still True: Oh, thank you so much for the compliment! Ahaha, well, the very first chapter did say that it was a prologue. (*ゝω・)ﾉ Well, because this is a sort of like 'The Bachelorette', many people will be competing for Alice's heart. But let's see if Klaus is going to be in this competition, eh? (○ﾟε^○) Thank you so much for your support! I apologize for taking so long to update!

Guest pretty pretty: Oh really? When was the last time someone used the term 'Victorian era'? Hmm, is Klaus going to be involved? I guess you'll just have to read to find out! （●＞ω＜●）

cherry-tree-of-life: Alice is actually a duchess in this story and she lands in the middle of the nobility spectrum, I believe. Alice is one of the nicest characters in Bakugan, so I am sure that she gets along with nearly everyone. （⌒▽⌒）And no, the third person point of view speech won't be used; if you look back at the now updated first chapter, you will notice that it isn't in third person point of view. I apologize if it bothered you!

hitokori midnight: Hello and I apologize for taking so long to update! I appreciate your support! ⊂((・▽・))⊃

Chapter 1

"Milady, I apologize for interrupting your time off today, but it appears that Duke Lync Volan of New Vestroia has arrived." Said lady's personal guardsman bowed deeply as his mistress closed the book that was in her hands and placed it on the small table. Today had been one of the only free days that the Duchess had when she didn't have to attend to her suitors or her lessons and she had wanted to spend it outside in the garden with a nice book. Unfortunately for her, it didn't last very long.

"Thank you Sir Masquerade...I suppose we must let him in." Lady Alice sighed as she rose from her seat, walking away from her seat in the garden into the manor to greet her unexpected guest.

Both her lady-in-waiting and her personal guardsman gave their lady sympathetic looks as they followed her. Lady Christina and Sir Masquerade had grew up together with the duchess and while they knew that their lady was popular among the people of Wardington, they hadn't expected that she was this popular. Within the first few hours that Duke Michael had announced his granddaughter's hand in marriage, nearly all of the noblemen in the the kingdom of Wardington arrived. And within the first few days, more noblemen from other kingdoms arrived at the Gehabich Manor. For the past two weeks, the poor duchess was forced to meet one suitor after another continuously, until her grandfather decided that she deserved a rest and gave her a day off.

"Cheer up, milady! I suppose since Duke Lync is here today, perhaps milord will allow you tomorrow off." Lady Christina tried to cheer up her duchess as they entered the living room, where Duke Michael sat with the suitor. Standing behind the Duke of New Vestroia was Sir Volt Luster, the duke's guardsman. From the looks of it, Lord Michael seemed highly uncomfortable with Duke Lync and nearly sighed in relief when he saw his granddaughter enter the room.

"Good afternoon, grandfather." Alice smiled warmly as she pressed a kiss against her grandfather's cheek before he left and turned to curtsy at the guest. "Good afternoon, my lord. I am honored to meet you."

"Good afternoon, Lady Alice." The suitor replied smugly as he took her gloved hand and kissed it. The lady mentally thanked her lady-in-waiting for advising her to wear gloves. "The pleasure is all mine. I am honored to meet a beautiful lady such as yourself." And with that, the duke winked flirtatiously and instead of finding it charming, Alice felt nearly disgusted.

"It is a lovely afternoon. Would you like to chat over some tea in the garden?" Quick to change the subject, the young duchess asked as she began walking back towards the garden that she had previously left, her lady-in-waiting and guardsman right by her heels right after they had flagged down a servant and asked them to bring tea and cakes over into the garden.

"Of course, anything for the pretty lady." Alice forced a polite smile at the cringy response as the two walked side-by-side out into the garden, their personal servants trailing behind them. Throughout the walk to the garden, the young duke continued on making advances towards the young duchess and as harsh as it sounded, the young duchess wanted to slap him. It was quite unbearable and as soon as they reached the garden, she nearly sighed in relief when she settled into the plush loveseat. She tried to suppress a sigh of annoyance when the duke settled in besides her.

"Volt. Leave us." The duke commanded as a servant brought out the tea and cakes. He then turned to her expectantly, as if to tell her to do the same thing with Lady Christina and Sir Masquerade.

"Lady Christina, Sir Masquerade, you both are excused." Alice smiled wryly as she looked to her lady-in-waiting and her personal guardsman. The pair looked at their lady with confusion and she could understand why. The three of them had been friends for nearly their whole lives and knew each other inside and out. It was quite obvious that the two sensed her discomfort around the duke.

"Will you be all right alone, milady? Perhaps Sir Masquerade could stay behind for your safety and protection." The lady-in-waiting asked cautiously.

"I will be all right, Christina, thank you. You both may leave." The Sapphire Princess regretted the words that left her lips as she shot the pair a small, forced smile before the two bowed and walked away slowly.

Once their personal servants left the garden, the young duke and duchess made small talk. Quite honestly it was more of Alice trying to make small talk while the duke attempted to flirt with her. She so desperately wanted to shoo the young duke away but she reminded herself that she shouldn't judge Duke Lync just yet. After all, he was a foreign suitor to her; he came from the kingdom of New Vestroia and perhaps this was what he considered to be 'charming'. Unfortunately for the poor duchess, the more the conversation dragged on, the more she realized that he was arrogant and a showoff, for the the entire conversation was about him. Not once besides the introductions did he ask her about herself. He talked about how he was from the highest nobility in the kingdom of New Vestroia and Alice bit her tongue; she knew that he was lying, for former-prince-now-King Keith was the top highest of New Vestroia's nobility alongside his sister, Princess Mira. Instead of exposing him for his lies, she merely smiled politely and nodded.

"Oh that reminds me! I have a gift for you, your grace." The young duchess was startled at the sudden change of topic, but she was grateful nevertheless that the Lord Lync finally changed the topic to something that didn't involve him or his 'greatness'. The duke pulled out a box out of the green cape that was draped over his shoulder and he handed it to her. "Open it!" He looked at her rather excitedly and for a split moment, Alice found him quite endearing. She lifted the top of the box to find a glassy pearl necklace staring back at her.

"It's beautiful, my lord, but I cannot-"

"Take it, I insist! After all, there will be more beautiful jewelry like this when we get married." He winked at her and the Sapphire Princess regretted that she called him endearing. "It will look beautiful on you. Here, I'll put it on for you." As the duke reached over to grab the box from her hands, a white smoke suddenly erupted, causing a fog that blurred out the Alice's vision, making it difficult to see just about anything. She felt the box which contained the necklace slip away from her hands and something much lighter replace it instead. Before long, Alice felt a strong hand grabbing her wrist, ushering her out of the fog and even though she was still a good distance away from the fog, it was still hard to see much.

She didn't even have enough time to register what exactly happened when Lync let out a piercing cry before his voice became muffled.

"Milord!"

"Your Grace!"

By the time Volt as well as Christina and Masquerade arrived in the garden, the white smoke had started to die out, leaving an utterly confused duchess and an utterly terrified duke.

"Milady, are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere? Are you in pain?" The lady-in-waiting and personal guardsman run towards their lady, glancing over her for any signs of cuts or bruises.

"I-I'm fine, thank you. I'm just in-" Lady Alice began her explanation.

"He-He-He th-threatened me!" The terrified Lync stammered as he stared at Alice and her personal servants, his eyes that were full of arrogance were now replaced with fear.

"Who, my lord?" Lady Christina asked curiously as she arched an eyebrow at her duchess, as if asking for an explanation.

"Him! He threatened me, saying that I shouldn't go anywhere near her or else he'll-he'll..." The hysteric duke hiccuped out, still horrified by the events that just occurred.

"Was it a ninja, my duke?" Sir Masquerade asked the shaking duke, who nodded his head fiercely. "That's...strange. We've never had a ninja invade our manor before. Is anything stolen from you milady? Lady Christina and I were with Lord Michael and the other servants were all dispersed in different rooms. And none of them have reported anything missing or stolen." He crouched down and picked up a deflated black, plastic item off of the cement; a ninja smoke bomb.

The confused duchess shook her head slowly. "No, I don't suppose so-oh!" She looked down at her hands to notice that the jewelry box that contained the pearl necklace was now replaced with a white rose-like flower, except it did not have thorns like traditional roses. It was beautiful...but she didn't know what type of flower it was.

"The necklace! It's stolen!" Lync wailed as he looked at the flower mournfully. "The ninja must have taken the necklace I gave!"

"That is strange..." Alice murmured as she twirled the engagement ring her mother had owned. This ninja had taken the pearl necklace that Lord Lync had given her, but did not steal any other valuables.

"Perhaps we should go inside. I suppose we'll be...safer inside." The duchess composed herself as the three personal servants obediently obeyed her and even the duke listened, although he continued sulking as he followed them inside. Before truly going inside the manor, the Sapphire Princess glanced back at the garden once more, as if she was looking for someone, before she entered the manor. Her fingers gently caressed the white petals and she smiled fondly at it, mentally thanking the ninja from saving her from a disastrous afternoon.

xoxo

"A pearl necklace? I never knew that you were into these." A pale green-blue haired male scoffed as he returned back the necklace to its respective 'owner'.

The 'owner' chuckled. "Of course I'm not into these. This is a worthless piece of jewelry. It's certainly no sapphire."

"Have you heard? The Gehabich Manor was robbed! It's never been robbed! And it's not even a robbery! The ninja just stole the necklace Duke Lync gave to Lady Alice!" A dark haired brunette exclaimed, interrupting the conversation between the two friends who averted their attention to the brunette. "Oh, you stole some jewelry-wait. It's a pearl necklace. Why would you steal it? The common ladies won't even wear these." The brunette rambled on, having forgotten about the piece of news he was previously ranting about. "I gave a pearl to Runo once and she didn't even accept it! Threw it right back at me! Could you believe that?!"

The other two chuckled at the brunette's distress. "Cut it out! That wasn't funny!" The brunette sulked as his other friends continued laughing.

"Fine fine, we'll stop. But you haven't answered my question though." The pale green-blue haired male averted his attention back to the raven-haired male. "Why would you steal this?"

The raven-haired male smirked as he held up the pearl necklace before he answered,

"To show those lowly nobles not to mess with what's mine."

End of Chapter 1.

Note: *sweats* Ahaha, I've abandoned this story for months and I come back with this terrible excuse of a chapter. PLEASE FORGIVE ME! (ó﹏ò｡) I wrote this in a span of about an hour and a half and I apologize that this is truly horrific. Please do not kill me! ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ I hope this chapter makes somewhat sense for you while you were reading this, but if it doesn't, feel free to send me a PM and I'll be more than happy to answer your questions or you could just ask your questions in your review and I'll be sure to answer it before the third chapter! Anyways, please review your thoughts on this chapter and since I still have some time on my hands, maybe I'll update the third chapter! Bye~!