Awesome! One review already! If I get more this time, I shall be even happier!

He examined his surroundings uncertainly, brushing off some dirt that had clung to his jacket when the portal rudely threw him to the ground. He was in standing in the midst of a wood, but far away he could just make out the shape of a house. Nodding in satisfaction, he disappeared in a puff of ashes only to stand beside the house a moment later. Peering through a window, he gasped at the sight before him. There she was, lying in her bed, her blond hair pooling around her head with streaks of blue and pink. Could this truly be her? No, according to his father, Alice had been hardly any older than the one he currently gazed upon, and his father had last seen her many years ago. But then...perhaps time did not function quite the same way as it did in Wonderland.

She began to stir, and the young man watched with interest, even pressing his face against the cold glass. Sitting up, she lazily opened her eyes to reveal two brilliant blue orbs. She stretched her arms with a sigh before standing and walking across the room towards a bookcase, where a stereo sat on an otherwise unused shelf.

His jaw hung open slightly as he studied her figure, eyes roaming up her long, porcelain legs to see black and purple plaid shorts covering her slender hips. A silk black tank top clung to her bosom, where he admittedly kept his eyes fixed a bit longer than necessary. Pink lips turned up in a smile as she turned the stereo on and the room was filled with Mindless Self Indulgence's "Straight to Video". He gasped as he recognized the song, and his eyes were filled with curiosity as the girl began to dance awkwardly to the music. Her body randomly twisted and turned to the beat with jerking sensations, and he found that he was unable to tear his eyes away, the display filling him with a sense of lustful awe. But all too soon, she stopped and lied down on her bed, closing her eyes and folding her arms behind her head.

He allowed the lingering remains of such an odd sensation to fade away so that he might act with a clear head. Smirking, he then disappeared and materialized in another shower of ashes by the bookcase. After turning the stereo off, he proceeded to vanish yet again.

The young woman opened her eyes just in time to see a darkly clad figure appear above her before he fell upon her in a straddling position. Something powdery fell into her hair and eyes as well. Immediately,a white-gloved hand was forced over her mouth. She blinked rapidly to clear away the dusty substance, only to find that the man's face was positioned right above hers, and a knife was pressed to her throat. She stared at his frighteningly pale face; sharp, green eyes, outlined in black, seemed to bore right into her, and his light gray lips were pursed in a minacious frown. All of this was framed by long, dusty, black hair.

"Do...not...scream. Do...not...struggle. Or I will...slit your throat." As if to confirm this statement, he pressed the knife against her neck harder, and she whimpered as the cold blade nearly began to draw blood. Her wide eyes began to flood with terrified tears, her body shaking beneath the man's presence.

"Are...you...Alice o-" He stopped as she began to frantically nod her head, and he pulled the knife away from her throat so as not to accidentally harm her. "Well then," he said, smirking. Before she could grasp any clear understanding of the situation, the gloved hand disappeared and a rag smothered her nose and mouth. Almost immediately, darkness obscured her vision and she succumbed to its chilling embrace.

Upon opening her eyes, she found that she was lying in a bed, wrists bound with rope to a decorative headboard composed of thin, twisted piping of different colors. At once, she noted that the room was extremely cold, and she shivered in her scant night clothes. Instinctively, she began to cry for help, screaming at the deaf walls. A door to her right, one that she had not noticed before, was flung open and her captor barged in, his blazing eyes accompanied by a snarling visage. When she failed to stop screaming, she was met with a stinging slap across the face. Quiet sobs soon replaced her frenzied cries, and she trembled with fear as the young man knelt beside her.

"Don't cry...p-please don't cry, Alice," he sadly beseeched, his voice emanating a gentleness that greatly contrasted against the harsh tone he had earlier questioned her with. At this, she stopped crying and looked at him curiously. "Miss Alice? Miss Liddell? Queen Alice? A-Angelic Alice?" He found it hard to say the last one, for they weren't his own words; they were his father's. "What shall I call you?"

She looked away, huffing angrily. "Well, to start, my name isn't Alice...it's Allison."

"What?" The shout of rage made her cringe. Suddenly, he grabbed her chin in an iron grip and forced her to look at him. His eyes were almost a golden color now. His fingertips felt positively hot against her freezing face. "You said that you are Alice! Alice of Earth!" He had gone through that entire ordeal only to bring back the wrong girl? Even he could find no humor in that, and it took a great deal of willpower to stop himself from laughing in her face.

She racked her brains for a memory of him asking that, and recalled that she hadn't let him finish his question earlier. She'd automatically assumed that he was going to say 'Allison'.

"I-I didn't know that you were going to say 'of Earth'!" Tears fell from her eyes again. "I thought you were only saying my name...Allison..." The young man roughly released her chin and stood, beginning to pace back and forth across the room, hunched over with hands clasped behind his back. Allison was now able to get a good look at him, considering that she'd previously either been looking at his face or trying to avoid his gaze. While before he had been wearing an entire suit of black formal wear, he was now dressed in black slacks, white shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, a crimson vest, and black boots. The same black top hat was perched atop his head, and he was still wearing white gloves, the only difference being that these ones had had the fingertips cut off.

"Then it'd do you some good to learn not to interrupt others while they are speaking, wouldn't it?" he muttered, throwing her an annoyed glance. "Well, if you're not Alice Lidell, then where is she?"

"My mother, she's in...in a madhouse," she said, whispered the last few words. She tried to keep the despondence out of her voice, but failed quite miserably. Her mother, her poor mother, had been taken away when Allison was only a small child. Supposedly her mother believed that some imaginary world existed, that she'd visited the place as a child, and that a man from the strange world was following her. She had believed her mother, for once or twice she was sure that she saw the shadow of a tall figure trailing behind her mother; sometimes at night she heard a low voice answer her mother's whispers, and then the voice would begin to shout, and the screaming would begin. When her mother hugged her and said that she was taking a little trip, Allison knew that she would never see her again. But before she let go of her mother for the last time, she had whispered in her ear, "I believe you, Mommy. He's not a very nice man." Her poor mother then began to cry hysterically as her father helped her into the car. Her mother had always been scared, jumping at the tiniest sound or movement, either whispering or crying, and Allison wanted her mother to be safe, so she didn't try to hold on when the time came to say goodbye. Instead, she wept into a pillow every night for several years following the incident. And soon, she came to believe that the voice she heard and the shadows she saw were only the products of the stories that her mother told her as a child, combined with the hope that she clung to that there was nothing wrong with her mother at all.

Immediately, he jerked upright and looked at her curiously. "You're...Alice's daughter?" And odd half-smile graced his features. "Of course! That would explain why you look so much like she did when she was your age." He then stopped pacing, as if he was contemplating something. "A madhouse, you say?" he questioned, as thought he had only just now registered this information. Obviously he had not caught the gloomy tone of Allison's voice, now did he notice her wince at the question. Cocking his head to the side, his smile widened into a full grin. "Well, why didn't she just come here? Everyone here is mad." His eyes had by now cooled to their original dark green, and they glimmered with deranged glee.

His expression sent a shudder throughout her body. "And where exactly is 'here'?" she asked timidly.

He looked at her as though she was the insane one. "Why, Wonderland, of course. Specifically, New Wonderland. But surely you must have know that, otherwise you wouldn't be here right now." Allison couldn't understand the meaning of his words, but the name he spoke sent something off in her head, something almost but not quite yet forgotten.

Suddenly he frowned. "You say that Alice is in a madhouse?" He began to pace once again. "Well, that won't do at all! If there's any hope of saving my father, then a quite sane Alice is required. Now she'd probably be no more of a help than that blasted Cheshire Cat!" Again, his words disturbed some dormant memories and sent them into a confusing shuffle. He froze and gasped, an idea hitting him so hard he almost doubled over. He then rushed to Allison's side, shaking her from her thoughts. "But you! You've obviously still got your marbles." He grasped her chin again, this time with gentle fingers, and inspected her face from all angles. She automically leaned into his hand, drawn to his warmth like a moth to light. "Yes, you'll do quite nicely. But..." he curled a few tendrils of her pink and blue hair around his long digits, "your hair needs cutting, and more practical coloring!" The smile of complete enthusiastic comprehension that he now wore unnerved Allison even more than his previous grin of madness had.

"My dear, there's so much to do!" He pulled something out of one of his boots; Allison soon recognized it to be the knife that had been held to her throat earlier. The awkward smile of curiosity that she wore melted from her face as a terrified grimace slithered up to take its place. He raised the blade above her head, and she screamed as he brought it back down.

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