Disclaimer: I do not own Alice in Wonderland, the Cheshire Cat, When the Higurashi Cry, Full Metal Alchemist, or Bizenghast.
Last chapter! The adventure ends.... Or does it?
Chapter 3
"So… Who is going to be first?" Bali-Lali asked, advancing upon us. I gulped from my position on the floor, glad that she wasn't looking at me. She turned her head and looked directly at me. I mentally cursed myself for jinxing it. "You! I'll get you!" She began to advance towards me and I struggled against the pain to sit up. Before she got to me, however, she suddenly leapt away, and a moment later a bolt of blue energy flew right past where she had just been. I looked over in the direction it came from, just in time to see Bali-Lali tackle one of the teachers.
Another teacher pulled out some sort of mini-cannon thing and fired several pellets at Bali-Lali they hit their target, exploding in a burst of light and a 'pop,' causing Bali-Lali to shriek in pain. I covered my ears to block out the sound, and made my way slowly and painfully across the floor to behind a large piece of rubble. It hurt all down my back, especially when I tried to bend or twist it any way.
Bali-Lali lunged at the teacher with the cannon, who fired another pellet thing right in her face. Once again, inhuman shrieks filled the room as a few drops of black blood dripped from the thing's face to the floor. She made a swiping motion at the teacher, and they went flying across the room, hitting the wall with a dull thud and sliding to the ground, unconscious. Bali-Lali soon had numerous teachers firing weapons and using their abilities against her.
"Yo," Someone whispered coarsely in my ear. I suppressed a scream and whipped around to come face-to-face with Tashie.
"Tashie! A-are you okay?"
"As good as I can be, I guess." She gave me a half-hearted smile, and I took in the many bruises and scratches all over her. I didn't see anything too bad, so I guessed she was telling the truth.
"What about everyone else?"
"I dunno. It's been so crazy I haven't been able to get a good look around…" she glanced around the room, though her eyes (and mine) kept dashing back to Bali-Lali. "Look! There's someone!" I looked where she was pointing and, sure enough, there was Davis, Annie, Ryhs, Sarah and Hailey, all huddled behind a pile of rubble.
"Well at least they're okay, but..." My eyes wandered to something I had seen right after Bali-Lali had first come in- I had hoped it had been my imagination, but there was no mistaking the mop of curly hair sticking out from beneath a piece of rubble. "Oh, god, Serena!"
Tashie looked at where I was staring and gasped. "Oh my god… But she's still moving! At least that's sort of a plus… Okay, no it's not, but you get what I mean!"
"No one ever gets what you mean." I snapped.
"Hey! Shut up!"
"Well, what have we here? You think this scrap'll help hide you?" the two of us froze and turned to stare up at the thing towering over us. Bali-Lali began to cackle. "Sorry to disappoint you, but that won't save you!" She dived suddenly at us and I scrunched my eyes shut, positive I was about to be eaten. I think I even saw my life flash before my eyes. I got to when I was 4 and my sister had pushed me off that brick wall, when something pushed me. Hard. I went flying to the side and opened my eyes to see Bali-Lali biting into the floor. I was amused at the disgusted look she gave when she realized what she's eaten, but at the same time I was terrified that that had almost been me. Then, whatever force had been holding me in the air (gravity-controlling teacher) suddenly vanished and I hit the floor. I cried out form the pain that shot up my back, but quickly stifled it, biting my lip so hard it bled.
"Are you alright?" A teacher with long brown hair stood with their back to me.
"I-I'm fine." I managed to gasp out, obviously not fine. "Don't… Don't worry."
Bali-Lali lunged toward him and he ducked out the way, pulling out a gun and firing it several times. Suddenly, he was pulling the trigger and nothing was happening. I saw the panic on his face and the maniacal grin on Bali-Lali. A thousand thoughts whirled around my head. Bali-Lali- was done playing- her next attack would be lethal. I couldn't do anything. I curled my hands into a fist and felt something cold. I looked down to see that I had grasped some sort of metal bar that must have been in part of something in the walls. Without hesitating, I gripped it with both hands and lunged at Bali-Lali. She whipped around, not expecting it and I swiped at one of her legs, knocking it out from under her. She stumbled a bit, giving the teacher enough time to gather some sort of purple energy in his hand and charge forward, plunging his fist right through her stomach. She let out a howl, causing me and everyone else in the room to wince and cover their ears, then seemed to explode in on herself and crumpled down into a bloody mass.
All my energy wasted, I felt the pain in my back full throttle again. It was complete silence for a few minutes, while everyone warily eyed the body, making sure she was dead. Then, noise erupted from most everyone (a.k.a the students). My eyelids were drooping, and my vision was going in and out of blurry, but I found myself vaguely aware of what was going on. Tashie was shouting at teachers for not getting Serena out fast enough, and the rest of the students were running around helping out those who were injured out from where they were stuck and bandaging wounds, then taking them to the gradually growing line of injured persons in front of a few teachers that apparently were trained in medical skills.
"Jo!" someone shouted, causing me to jump a little. I sluggishly turned my head towards the teacher from before. "Jo, is that your name?" I nodded slowly. "Are you okay?" I nodded again, and then everything went black.
'Where am I? and why aren't I at school?" groaned softly and opened my eyes, then shut them again tightly. It was way too bright. Plus, it was all white. Looking at white things hurt my eyes normally, and I definitely couldn't deal with it after being unconscious… Then everything came back to me.
"Serena!" I cried out, sitting up, "Ow-!" I winced and shut my eyes from the pain in my back. "Ow, my back…"
"Take it easy, Jo." I looked up to see Tashie sitting by the white bed that I was laying in, dressed in all white clothes.
"… Am I in a hospital? What happened? Is Serena okay?"
"Geez, geez, calm down, Jo, relax!" She waited for me to lie back down before continuing. "Serena's fine. She was a bit beat up, but she's fine now. Unlike you. That was cool, hitting Bali-Lali, I always thought you were a wimp, but I guess you have some strong points. "
"So… Everyone's alright?"
"Yeah. Apparently you messed up your spine, so the nurses pretty much kept you out of it 'til it mostly healed, otherwise you'd be in a ton of pain."
"You say it so light-heartedly…" I muttered dryly. "Makes me wonder if you actually care."
"Why would I care about you?"
I scowled at her and she smiled lightly and shrugged. "Wait… How long have I been out of it?"
"About a week… Why?"
"A week?" I cried, jumping up, "Ah! I have to go! I'm going to have so much make-up work to do! My parents probably think I'm dead or something! How am I supposed to explain something like this to them?"
As I began going off on some long thing about how my life would be ruined, Tashie observed me from the side with a slightly exasperated and mostly disgusted look. "Dude… Chill!" She shouted. I stopped mid-rant and looked at her. "…You're not even going to ask about him, are you?"
"Huh? Who?"
"The baby, smart one!"
"Baby? Oh, yeah! Sorry, I forgot about it."
Tashie looked ready to bang her head repeatedly against a wall. "Jo! Ah, whatever. It's a boy. Lauren was wrong. He's been named Thomas by the class. We had to turn down the boys' idea of naming him 'Beast.'
"Heh. That's the name of an X-men."
"A what?"
"Never mind. Anyways, it's going to be our new class pet!"
"Your what?"
"Class pet! You know, like Larry."
"Tashie," I explained slowly, "You can't have a baby as a class pet."
"You can until it grows!" she retorted.
"But you can't- ah, never mind."
"Anyways, I'm just glad you're not freaking out about going home anymore."
My eyes widened. "Oh my god! Aaaaaah! I'm going to be so late1 I'm going to be grounded forever! I've never been grounded before! I'm going to die!"
"Jo, shut up! You don't even know how to get home! Shouldn't you worry about that before how late you're going to be when you do get home?"
"That won't be a problem." A commanding voice spoke from the doorway, and I turned to see a woman in dark, flowing robes that dragged on the floor not enough to look stupid, but just long enough for it to give the impression that she every time she walked the cloth flowed and rippled like wind or water.
"H-head mistress!" Tashie snapped to attention and, frankly, I was rather impressed. There weren't many people that held authority over Tashie, or Tashie actually allowed them to have authority over her.
"Head mistress?" I asked aloud.
The woman chuckled. "Yes, I believe you are talking about me. And there is no need to worry about not being able to get home. While you were unconscious we researched the portal you came through. It wasn't as much a portal, though, as it was, what we call, a Looking Glass Transfer."
"Then that mirror was real…." I muttered.
"Yes, it was a Looking Glass. Capitalized. They float throughout the dimensions and randomly appear, allowing anything that comes into contact with them to be transferred to another dimension parallel to theirs."
"So this is a parallel universe?"
"I believe that's what you'd call it, yes."
"Oh… So, how am I going to get back?"
"Follow me." She turned and left.
About an hour later I was standing in the middle of the secret room Tashie had first taken me to, surrounded by some complex diagram the teachers had drawn. Tashie was right next to the edge of the diagram and waving.
"Bye, Jo!"
"Yeah- see you Tashie!"
"Yup!" she shouted back, "Don't worry- I'll come and crash your class party!"
"Sure- because my class is always a party!" I called sarcastically. We both laughed and I turned to the head mistress.
She shouted an order to the teachers positioned evenly outside the diagram, and they each placed their hands on a symbol and chanted something.
"See you soon!" I heard Tashie yell.
A sudden bright light filled my vision, and the next thing I knew I was on a sidewalk, sitting on something hard. I stood up and looked at what I had landed on. It was a pencil bag. There was also a notebook and a textbook, along with an agenda. I picked up the notebook.
"Oh, someone must have dropped these, I wonder who they belong to…" I flipped it over and blinked. On the back, scrawled in hasty handwriting, was 'Josephine Wissmann.' "Huh? But that's me!" I looked at the things scattered on the ground again. They looked an awful lot like my history supplies. I picked them up and began walking. It really seemed like no time had passed since I'd been left. I had been wrong thinking that the same amount of time would pass here as it did there. I slowed my pace a bit. That was a lot better than I had expected- I had thought I'd been gone for a week and had somehow come to the conclusion that I would be sent to jail in Australia (not sure how I came to that, but I did…). I used to be way too up tight. Tashie would be angry if she knew. Now, it didn't seem like such a big deal to be late to History class.
Two minutes later I got detention.
Afterward
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
I sat in a practically empty room with my (already finished) homework set to one side. Some old, fat, and bald teacher sat behind a desk at the front of the room, reading a newspaper and occasionally looking up at me and glaring. The tock was clicking way too loud to be normal- I think it's some torture method public school's use on kids in detention. It was incredibly boring. I sighed (the teacher glared at me for making the slightest bit of noise) and found myself thinking back to the Other Bradley Middle School. It seemed so unreal. But then I got back, and my normal school day seemed unreal, too.
'Great, Tashie, thanks,' I thought sourly, 'now everything's unreal.' As I replayed the events in my head, my mind flashed back to what Tashie had said right before I'd disappeared.
'See you soon,' I think it was…. My eyes widened, and that's when I realized that she had been serious.
If you've read this far then CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!! Thank you for reading my humble works... Technically this was what I turned in for my 'short story' project... It was the longest in the class with 20 pages single-spaced. My teacher was thrilled when I handed it in... Not. In fact, when I got it back there was a strange scribbling on one of the pages. My teacher claimed that it was his young son who had done it, but I know better. *nods smartly*
Anyways, I hope you liked it, and if not... Have a cookie. And, if you did like it, you have a cookie too. :)
