Things settled into the mundane for Michael at the Hatter estate. He found himself enjoying the luxuries of the place, and most of all he loved the many books Blood kept. He spent some time with Lilly, chatting with her out in the garden. Her weird infatuation for him never subsided.

"You should really get over me," Michael said as they sat in the garden together. Michael had taken to sneaking Lilly cups of coffee. After all the stress she was put under with being the only person handling the budget of the Hatter household he figured she needed it.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's just-I don't know. I just like you so much I don't know what to do about it! It drives me crazy!"

"More crazy than you already are?" he said dryly.

"Ha ha. You're so hilarious I forgot to laugh. God. I deal with this sort of thing from the twins all the time. Do not try to get on my bad side, Michael," she said, rolling her eyes. She settled down in her chair, sipping on her coffee. "This stuff is so good," she said.

"I guess. Tea's better."

"Now you sound like my father," she said bleakly. They were silent for an awkward moment before she said, "Hey, don't you think there's some sexual tension between me and you? Just a little, Michael?"

"Sure, I do," he said, sipping his tea. "I also believe there is violent tension and get-the-hell-away-from-me-you're-crazy tension." "Can't you take anything serious?"

"Sorry. Defense mechanism against girls in weird realities who get strange crushes on me and ask me about sexual tension."

"Why you-" She began, and her words were certainly going to be biting if she hadn't been interrupted.

The twins came behind them. "Aw. Look, brother. Little sister is on a date."

"Yes, a date with the foreigner."

"It's not a date," Michael said. "We're just drinking tea together. We're not-"

Another interruption. Something stirred and crawled from out under the table. Even the twins watched curiously as Ashe appeared, pushing the table cloth aside. She yawned and adjusted her clothes.

"Are you serious?" Lilly said. "You were here the entire time?"

"Yes, and your lovely conversation with Michael woke me up. By the way, no, I don't think there's any sexual tension between the two of you. I think you're just obsessed."

"You were asleep under the table?" Michael said, not able to wrap his mind around the idea. "What? Don't you live at the Circus? Can't you sleep there?"

"Here was more convenient," Ashe said brightly, but Michael could tell there was more.

"Yeah. Under the table was so much better than a warm bed back home. Why didn't you really want to go back?" he said.

"Because," she said, tightening her lips. "I just didn't. I go where I want." She shrugged. He saw a sad look cross her face, but she replaced it quickly with an eerie, ill-fitting smile.

"Lilly, I'm going aside with Ashe for a second," Michael said, standing from his chair. He realized Lilly wasn't even listening at all. She was too busy fighting with the twins about the coffee in her hands. He only could hear bits and pieces of their rapid-fire conversation.

He shook his head, sighed, and looked at Ashe. "Will you tell me if we're alone?"

She cocked her head, watching him suspiciously. "Why do you care?"

"Because you're a sad person to me. I was a psychology major back home. Broken people like you are my forte."

She laughed coldly. "I'm not broken. Don't try to fix me, foreigner. Be a good little tool. Find yourself a nice Roleholder and have lots of children to abandon. That's what real foreigners do."

"Ah-ha!" Michael triumphantly pointed a finger at her. "You have abandonment issues. It all goes back to your childhood. I bet you have daddy issues, too! Wouldn't that be something!" The psychologist in Michael was thrilled to have such a messed-up case as Ashe.

"I never said that!"

"Daddy issues?" Twin voices asked in unison. The twins stopped arguing with Lilly and looked to see what Ashe and Michael were doing. "Who has daddy issues?"

"She does!" Michael said proudly. "She has a case of Oedipal complex! I mean, Elektra complex since she's a girl."

"Huh?" Ashe's lip curled.

Michael explained what an Oedipal complex was. The twins burst out laughing. Lilly looked horrified. Ashe looked murderous.

"…and that is the problem that has been plaguing you since childhood," Michael concluded.

"I despise my father," Ashe said. "How dare you suggest otherwise."

"I'm sorry," Michael said, shaking his head. "I'm a psychologist. We see things as they are."

"Give me your neck, so I can wring it," she said. "If you knew who my father was…such a thing wouldn't even cross your mind. What pervert came up with that theory!"

"Freud."

"I will hunt him down!"

Michael shrugged. "He's already dead."

"I'll hunt down every single descendent he has until his bloodline is purged!"

"Uh, yeah," Michael said. "Have fun with that."

The twins walked off, both amused enough for the next week. Lilly was not sad to see them leave.

"I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive you," Ashe said, brushing his shoulder. He realized that her personality had just switched from murderous to seductive within the span of a second. "Unless you do something for me."

"What?" Michael said. "It involves something dangerous, doesn't it?"

Lilly glared harshly at Ashe. "Don't do it, Michael. She's just a nasty slut."

"Come on, Michael," Ashe purred. "You want to come with me. We'll have sooo much fun together…walking in the woods…alone…" She looked at Lilly, who was fuming.

"Sure, why not," Michael said. He was not a difficult person to convince.

"I can think of several reasons," Lilly muttered.

X

They walked through the woods. Michael was thankful that Ashe seemed to know her way around so well, for he could barely tell one tree from another.

"So what was your real reason for not sleeping at the Circus," Michael said. "I promise not to bring any of my psychology theories into it."

"It's…a lot of things. Very complicated. You don't need to hear them," she said quickly.

"Come on. Tell me. I agreed to come, it's the least you can do."

She gave him a long, searching look, before sighing and giving in, her shoulders slumping."I just can't stand that place or the Joker. If I have the opportunity I'd be anywhere but there. Hence, the table. Sure, it was a little uncomfortable, but I'm not one to complain."

She led him through the woods, not talking for most of the trip.

"You seem to know your way around," he said.

"I used to come here all the time as a little girl," was her simple reply.

"For some reason it's hard to picture you as ever being an innocent little girl."

"Who says I was innocent? I'm a rotten bitch now and I was a rotten bitch then. I was just pint-size."

"Makes sense," Michael said.

They traveled a little further in. Michael could barely hear Ashe's footsteps. Unfortunately, he was much noisier than her. Leaves and twigs crumbled and broke beneath his feet. If there was something to step on that would make noise, he found it. He saw Ashe grit her teeth several times at him, and several times she spoke sharply to him.

After a while she indicated for him to stop and pointed into the distance. He saw something in the distance that looked like a tent.

"You're going to have to be quiet from here on out," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," he said sarcastically. "Anything else you need?"

"Nope. That will be all." She smiled sharply.

They moved forward a few feet. Suddenly she held her arm out to stop him from moving forward any further.

"You see that man near the tent?" She crouched down, her breath coming out quietly. His gaze followed where she pointed. "I'm going to kill him."

"Wait-what? You can't just kill people at random."

"Not random. Oh no. This has been in my plans for a very, very long time."

"Ugh." Michael scrunched up his face. "I'm not going to be involved in you murdering someone." He started to turn around.

She grabbed his arm and hissed in his ear.

"Listen, I know how foreigners think but it doesn't work like that here. That's the first thing you must learn if you're going to survive. You can't walk around thinking like you did back in your old world. This isn't your old world."

"This has to do with you murdering someone how?" He shook her hand off.

"He's an evil man." Her eyes narrowed. "Believe me."

"Right. All I have is your word to go on. That doesn't mean much. Come on. Forget about this. Let's go back." He touched her arm, and she sighed.

"I'll do it whether you think it's right or not," she said, and with those words she charged forward, drawing several knives from the selection on her body.

He froze and watched, genuinely frightened for the man.

The man's reaction was odd. As she came charging towards him, he simply smiled and waved.

Without stopping for a moment, she swiped at him. He easily side-stepped her, laughing.

"Still after me?" he said.

"I'll never stop," she said. She swiped at him again with both her sword arms, the knives she held gleaming in the sunlight.

The man laughed again harder, as once again he avoided her attack. "You know you can just walk away from this if you want," he said.

"Walk away? Absolutely never," she said.

The man shrugged and drew a drew his sword.

The next few minutes were too brutal for Michael to watch. Ashe never had a chance. When it was all over she lied on the ground, bloody and shaking, anger and pain distorting her face.

The brown-haired man looked down on her body, scratching his cheek. He smiled. "Hm. Well, looks like you should've walked away when I gave you the chance, huh?"

Michael watched, not sure what to do. It seemed cowardly to remain hidden, but what could he do? He jumped inwardly when he heard rustling behind him.

"Oh, how stupid you can be," he heard Bryon's voice. He turned.

"I tried to stop her," Michael said quickly. "But…"

"No one can stop her when she gets it in her head to do something. It's just up to other people to clean it up. Namely, me."

"Who is that guy, anyway?" Michael squinted into the distance.

"His name's Ace," Bryon said as he walked past Michael to his sister where he picked her up and looked at Ace accusingly. "Was this really necessary?" he said.

"It's just a light wound," Ace said. "She probably won't die."

She grasped onto her brother's coat. She glared into the distance at nothing in particular, her breathing coming out in shallow gasps.

"What if she does die?" Bryon said. "I'll be disappointed if I'm one less a sister."

Ace shrugged. "Then she dies. She was obviously never important enough the have a replacement, right? She shouldn't messing with this Game, anyway. She's not a part of it. She has no place in it."

At his words, her grip on Bryon's coat tightened. "That's what they always say," she whispered bitterly.

"Well, if one of you could point me the way out of this forest, I think we'll be on even terms," Ace said. "What with you randomly deciding to attack me and all."

Ashe glared and said nothing.

"Uh, how about you just start walking in any random direction. It usually works for you," Bryon said.

Ace gave him a thumbs-up sign. "Right! It does. I'm sure I'll find my way out of here eventually. Take care of your sister, okay! I'm sure she won't die…maybe she will. But no hard feelings, right?"

Bryon's smile turned strained. "Sure," he said. "Just start walking."

"Okay!" Before Ace left, he caught sight of Michael. "New foreigner? I heard about you. Your kind always tends to change things around here. Try not to change things to much or I'll kill you, okay?"

Michael wasn't sure how to react. Of course, he was quickly growing used to these sorts of threats from Ashe, so he wasn't as scared as he normally would be.

"I'll…try not to," he said.

When Ace was gone, Bryon set Ashe down and began to treat her wounds.

Michael crouched down beside them.

"Who's this Ace person supposed to be?" Michael said. "And why is Ashe trying to kill him?"

"He's our father," said Bryon. "And she's trying to kill him because she obviously doesn't care if she dies."

"I told you not to tell anyone!" she said sharply.

"Oh hush you," Bryon said. "You're injured. Injured people are supposed to bleed and not talk. Silent now? Good."

"If it helps, I believe you about not having an Oedipal complex now," Michael said.

The mention of Oedipal complex earned a sharp glare from Ashe.

"How'd you know to come, anyway?" Michael looked weirdly at Bryon. "You kind of came out of no where."

"He's a stalker," Ashe said.

"Because I know that if she's not at the Circus or the Hatter estate then she's probably causing trouble here," Bryon said, ignoring her.

"Would he really kill me?" Michael asked.

"Yes," Bryon said simply. "He doesn't kill Ashe because he thinks her attempts to kill him are funny."

Ashe clenched her fists. "I'm sure he'll find it hilarious when I truly do kill him."

"He's a Roleholder. He doesn't care if he dies, anyway, so it doesn't really matter anyway," Bryon said. "Now let's get you back to safety so we can treat these wounds."

"I'll carry her," Michael said.

Bryon looked at him oddly. "All right."

Michael set his hands beneath her back, but lifting her turned out to be an impossible task. He was a skinny intellectual. Ashe watched him impatiently.

"Having problems, manly man?" she said, giggling. "It's all right. I think I can walk back, anyway."

Michael sighed, annoyed at his lack of strength.

"Yeah, that's gotta be embarrassing," Bryon said, easily lifting her up. "Ever consider physical activity. Might help you, foreigner."

Michael glared. "Not everyone can be a muscle-bound freak," he said.

"I have a perfect physique," said Bryon.

"Oh my god." Ashe buried her head in her hands. "Good thing I'm not injured and in need of treatment."