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CHAPTER 7

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Aria woke up but didn´t move, she remained still trying to take in her surroundings and determine the situational status. Her body hurt everywhere; her system had been chemically overloaded, her muscles had been very stressed, her organs felt pressure, her senses were at least dimmed and she felt nauseous. She didn´t seem to be in too much immediate danger, but she was still hurt and all her body ached with every breath she took.

By the chilly current around, she knew that she was in a big room and that she had been covered in several layers of sheets and banquets while she had lay on the floor. She was hugging some fuzzy soft pillow or more likely a big plush toy and she was so disoriented that she was unable to comprehend what had happened.

She remembered the battle at the amusement park, then Alice in the basement of the mirror´s house, the faceless kid and then some impacts… then? Then she was falling through the looking glass.

She opened up her eyes slowly and blinked a few times until the haziness of her vision disappeared. She emitted a mix between a growl and a pout and hugged tighter her plush, drawing the attention of a young teen that had tried his best to stay awake and keep guard but had failed to do so (constantly) as he got in and out of sleep too.

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-You´re alright! – The teen timidly but eagerly crawled over to her and averted his gaze shyly as if he had done something bad. She slowly rose to a sat position still under the covers hugging the black rabbit that was waking up too.

-At least I´m alive… I think…– She nodded answering dryly – Where are we? Who are you?

-I don´t know. This is the library of some sort of castle or mansion. You had a bad fever…- He looked a bit hurt but when his age changed and she said "Oh, it´s you" he felt better and his smile reflected it.

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The word "library" seemed to have the effect of a jar of espresso coffee on her and she stood up to look around despise her dizziness.

She noticed the silence and atmosphere of the place and the lack of lights or any other sound.

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-Where is everyone else?

-I don´t know, the only thing I found was that bunny frozen in the throne room. Then it was unfrozen and I brought it here.

-Eh? What bunny? – She looked at the rabbit she was still carrying and dropped it when it moved in her arms. –It´s alive!?

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The rabbit hit the floor with a thud that made him see little stars, then she got down to pick the weak furry again.

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-I´m sorry – She said softly and caressed the bunny. It was her fault for not noticing the poor little thing. Then she again looked at the teen – How long was I out?

-I don´t know. Time haven´t changed since I woke up but I´m sure it should have been a bunch of time changes.

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Aria sat down again and asked the kid to tell her everything after they passed through the mirror, and he did. She barely interrupted him unless he side tracked. What he told her wasn´t much, but the situation was stranger and more uncomfortable than she had though.

Now that there was some calm she took into his appearance and his circumstances. He seemed to be around 13 years old now but a little while ago he had been younger or older and that was because of whatever she had done to him, which quite frankly she didn´t remember well or cared about; but she did have the files to check that up later for details and she would.

This was the jester kid that attacked her at the circus that time and she remembered the constant mention of how much a broken toy he was because his clock was damaged and how everyone turned to look away from him and their collective advice that dead was the best for someone with a damaged clock in this world.

The kid was really glad that she was fine, but also was very embarrassed and remorseful for what he had done even if she had ordered it. Now she was hovering over him and judging his broken nature. He couldn´t meet her scrutiny and a painful shiver sent him back to the age she had seen him at the circus.

He looked mangy and scrawny and almost as beaten as she was. However she could see the potential of this willing test subject in whatever she had managed to cause him. But what for? She was going to leave as soon as she healed enough and/or settled things if only because she didn´t want to left stuff half done. According to whatever mercenary code she abided to, she would take things to a close. Whatever happened first. There were many things on her mind, but she needed to focus and the hell with everyone or everything else.

But first things first.

She knew she was somewhere in Diamond but her information about the place was limited, and although she was alive, she needed to check on her status and how bad she really was cause she was almost fearing internal damag. It would be stupid to ignore or deny that she was wounded and weak. Once she secured herself she could concentrate on everything else.

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-Did you got all these sheets from bedrooms? – Plans were starting to form in her head.- (One step a time)

-Yes- The kid looked nervous. Had he done something bad?

-Good. Take me to one – She ordered and he complied, timid while around her.

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The boy lead the way in silence with occasional sounds like "ohh…" …ehh?" as if he wanted to tell something but couldn´t find what or the courage to say it. He took her to the most fancy room he had found and opened the door for her. Her presence looming behind him in an intimidating way making him move away from the door. Before entering she addressed him.

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-We both reek of blood and sweat. This is a castle. There should be guard quarters or something somewhere; probably in the first floor. Go and find less horrible and useless clothes for you, take a bath, clean your wounds and rest a bit, after that find out where the kitchen is. I know you must be very tired too so don´t overdue need to rest too. I´ll take a bath myself and check on my wounds; then I´ll see you later at the library – She told him and entered the room leaving him outside.

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He of course obeyed. With a timid expression of bewildment at her dry show of caring for his being that soon turned into a timid smile, he happily went to do as she told him.

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Aria put the bunny that seemed oddly pensive on the bed and sighted. She checked her status in her history log and didn´t like it. The only reason she was alive at the moment was because her suit gave her defibrillation shocks to reactivate her cardiac rhythm and because she had been paranoid enough to try small quantities of substances and poisons from wonderland to gain some immunity to them just in case someone tried to poison her. Again.

That had lessened the reaction long enough for that kid to find and give her an antidote to the poison in the darts while her bleeding had gotten much of the arrhythmic chemicals out of her system. She was in a pretty bad shape and it would a few days; she was lucky to not have internal wounds but it would still be a while till she managed to heal at least at a manageable level. She had lost a lot of blood and chemicals were still in her system. It had taken her quite the effort to follow the kid and carry the bunny.

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She checked the room and then went to the bed where she had left the black bunny and she started taking of her gear until she was only in her suit. Then she slowly unlatched her suit starting from her neck and going down letting her breasts free from the pressure in front of the bunny who immediately looked away in an overly embarrassed manner that didn´t went unnoticed to her.

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-Oh, c´mon? Am I really that horrible? – She said teasingly while petting the bunny in the head and then drawing him in another hug against her exposed chest. She was so dizzy that his weird reaction of went completely past her.

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She missed her cat, as much as she could miss anything in any case. Right now she felt herself needy in a strange way she was not used to and she wanted back the little ball of cuteness and fearless fluff named Bunsen; she didn´t like that the kitten was not around but there was nothing she could do about it. If the kitten had landed somewhere else it was beyond her control, if it was roaming at the castle then it surely would appear later when it got hungry... It was strange, but that made her upset and even worried, as much as she could worry about someone or something. Maybe it was because the kitten had provided her with some sort of nice and non-intruding comfort in this strange world, something she had lacked for a very long time.

Some small grunt noises came from between her breasts and she stopped chocking to dead the poor dazed rabbit that needed oxygen and fast. She had almost suffocated the poor thing between her breasts!

So doing the first thing that came to her mind she put her hand over his pink nose and her lips around his little muzzle and gave it mouth to mouth respiration.

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After being sure that the rabbit was alive, Aria undressed completely and leaved the stunned (and sleep deprived) bunny (who did his best to avoid looking at her) and checked physically and exhaustively her body to see in detail the extend of the damages she had sustained.

She then walked to the bathroom carrying all her stuff and let out the hot water to fill the incredibly big and luxurious pool. Taking advantage, she used the scented oils, salts and aromatic candles lying around while her body relaxed and her mind focused in processing what happened and her current situation.

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Her anger had subsided already, as with any other emotion she couldn´t hold onto it for long or constantly, and that was good because she could see things more clearly and analyze factors without externalities.

For starters she was in Diamond country.

A country that should have been lost but was somehow still around… No, that was not it, she though. The country, a mass of lands couldn´t be just gone.

E=mc^2 , energy could be transform to mass and vice versa… but all connection to the place definitely had been lost and cut, maybe because a separation in time space sequences if one considered how the territories in Wonderland connected to each other.

If there was no connection there was no way for clocks here to reach the place were they were supposed to be repaired and population was due to dingle and eventually disappear like the end of a gauss bell graph would show.

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-(But wasn´t there supposed to be another clock master here? What had happened to that roleholder? Was it another version of Julius? )

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That meant the place had lost its inhabitants and without a source of life energy (aka: a foreigner) all life should have ended (except that the black bunny she had been using as a huggable plush proved it wasn´t so, at least not completely), in any case the place itself was still there. Maybe it was not in a prime state but it was definitely there. Which meant that the energy the last foreigner provided was enough to keep its static existence more or less stable.

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-(Was that Lorina Lidell?)

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It was all about balance of equations… She´d have to do that later.

Thinking about static states she remembered the kid saying that no time changes had occurred since they arrived. Probably a self preservation measure of Wonderland to avoid the waste of energy that confirmed it had been cut off from the normal time line. She had tough about it a bit; it probably took a lot of energy for this world´s time to run parallel to her world´s and Julius had said that at some point it had become "out of time". That meant that time passage was static here and probably other mechanics were set to a stop too, like lands moving or things that probably would require a lot of energy.

How much energy was actually needed by a country? Was there anyone left there like that black rabbit? Any person? How was that possible if Alice older sister was the foreigner prior to them? It couldn´t have been but maybe a couple decades at much, could it?

There was something extremely fishy about that. In all records and stories she had found, various generations of role holders could pass before any foreigner appeared. There were some missing factors in here and she couldn´t progress much into defining equations without them.

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-(Sight)

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She now had the first questions at least; now onto the next part…

What was she going to do? She had her vial, so she could leave at any moment and she wanted to, didn´t she?

Then why wasn´t she considering it an immediate option? What was that she wanted to settle?

It puzzled and confused her why she was still here after what had happened. But pondering on it she contented with the conclusion that such was the best choice for now. She was very hurt and needed to recover before going back or she would not last much in her own world.

On a more personal issue there was the "dream" experience she had regarding that lake. What the ******** hell had that been!? The place had felt even more real than her cathartic simulations and it had presented her with a tangible pull that leaved a mark on her psyche records in her monitoring programs. Like when she detected Joker or Nightmare messing with her psyche.

She had also "unlocked" some hidden files of her memory slots that were encrypted. She had seen herself running through the corridor of a military facility that, according to the info she had preciously gathered some months ago, looked like the place she was heading to and she had "known" that she had actually finished her mission. Was that a projection of possibilities or something more?

There was also the mirror image that she had also "known" that it wasn´t her reflection. It was something important apparently, she suspected it was a communication attempt but couldn´t imagine by whom or what, yet it was clear that it involved her and something about the earrings, maybe even a reference to Alice on the other side of the mirror…

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-Of course!- Aria face palmed.

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She had gone "through the looking glass"!

Wonderland was a place about balance and Diamond was at the other side of the mirror and was supposed to run parallel to Hearts and Clover for what she knew. If you tough about it Wonderland had 4 vectors. For there to be a north, it must be referenced to a south. There can´t be a west if there is no east or up if there is no down All countries in this world were supposed to be balancing each other out, for what she had read or heard by her allies about Diamond, this place was a counterbalance of hearts. It had a castle and territories at fighting too. When Spades disappeared (and now she suspected maybe it hadn´t done so completely) all the pull back effect fell on Diamond and that consumed a lot more energy because it needed to counter balance Clover too, which combined with the other circumstances like the actions of the "Dodo", set the path for what happened.

But how was everything connected? She got a few hunches related to quantum physics, particularly the string theory. But until she learned more of this place those conjectures would take her nowhere.

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Then there was the issue of the earrings. That was not hard to figure it out, even if she wasn´t wearing them (which seemed to be the trigger for activating them), she still had them with her in her and were hers. They were a sort of device and she, being a foreigner had powered them.

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-What would happen if I ….

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Rather than thinking what would happen she went ahead and took out the earrings from the compartment of her suit where she had kept them and put them on.

A strange sensation washed over all her body, she could almost feel it integrating in her cells like radiation, It was warm but cool, like the mist from dry ice. She knew that this "devices" were being restarted and powered by her. She had enough experience synching with machines to know when a gadget was being turn on from a passive state or sleep mode.

Was this a connection like the deal she made and that was engraved in the back of her hand or how was this related to such stuff? Joker was not here so it was useless to think about it.

As she started to ponder on those topics she decided to change them to another matter more closely at hand. What was up with that kid?

The boy was mentally (and physically) unstable. What he had begged her was enough prove of that, who in their right mind would want to be the toy of someone else? But then again, the boy was desperate and in a situation that couldn´t have end in anything else but dead, and the partitura had said that his clock would probably have served as spare pieces which was kinda sad.

What was she to do? She didn´t like kids. Heck! She didn´t even knew how to deal with kids and she really wasn´t gonna try! The mere tough of it was even more alien to her than her own mind was to others.

But that kid had saved her just as she had (ordered) asked him. He had tried his best to keep her warm and comfortable and that counted for something, so she would give him a chance to back down on his request. Staying near her would only damage his poor mind even more not to mention the physical dangers. Besides she was going back to her world soon and he would end up alone anyways, right?

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Once she finished her bath and drought herself, she went to the bed (not caring about being naked ) where the bunny was sleeping , and hugged him before going to sleep under the warm covers with her sort of new pet. She needed rest.

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The poor bunny was kind of paralyzed by what had occurred since she woke up and he was too weak to try anything, in fact he was reduced to let himself be carried around by her like a toy or a pet. Not that he wasn´t used to, lady Crysta also used to do that.

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-( She…! She kissed me! I can´t believe it. First she tries to murder me by suffocation and then she kisses me! Just who does she think she is!? She doesn´t even know who I am!) - It was not as if he could communicate anything yet and he had decided that he needed to see their intentions first. If they tough he was a normal rabbit then he could listen freely.

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The black bunny went to sleep once more after his little dead experience between her breasts. When he woke up she was holding unto him once again and had gone under the covers with him, but this time she was naked, and he was too! He realized with panic.

He tried to pry himself free but her hold only tightened at feeling the movement; she pressed herself even more against him forcing their bodies rub each other, making the prime minister completely aware of her physiognomy. He couldn´t do anything but (try) to calm himself by listening to her heartbeat, after a while with every beat he felt more at ease and noticed his strength was slowly coming back to him. Maybe soon he could speak or transform again and then he could communicate his identity and the terrible mistake of such indecent situation to her and ask all his questions (and then murder her). He needed to know what had happened and he needed them to help him survive until he recovered enough. This degradation was unavoidable and inevitable, so he´d have to cope with it somehow.

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When she finally woke up and let him go, he buried himself deeper in the sheets after receiving a nice view of the body that he´d been feeling against him for who knows how long. And once she was set ready she carried the incredibly embarrassed (not that she noticed it) bunny in her arms who had resigned himself to be carried around like a pet.

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The council was not progressing at all.

The heavy loses they had suffered recently didn´t help them with their humor. Now they were facing thousands of people rallying and claiming for their heads or using their territories as combat zones on grand. It had been a huge blow to their egos to recognize that they couldn´t fight all the mobs and had resourced to asking the Cheshire cat to cut off the spaces of their territory´s main buildings and had taken a look around to see if he could find a trace of Aria but in vain. For the towers it had been easy as there was basically only one entrance, but for the others like the mansion they had to content with isolating the most important and central places.

They were starting to fight again when a gunshot made them shut up.

At the back of the room Joker had his gun still raised with smoke coming from it´s barrel. A completely maddened and ragging expression in his face scared almost everyone in the place, reminding them of exactly how displeased was the one in charge of upholding the rules of this world.

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-Stop wasting time. She´s out of anyone's reach.

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The silent was tense when the red head turned around and disappeared in the shadows.

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-She´s in Diamond. She crossed through the looking glass and the shard of it was thrown into the mirror.

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They all heard him say. Now they knew where she was and the panorama was if possible even worse than before.

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I think she´s taking a liking to poor Sydney because Bunsen is not around (and Sydney is too weak to do anything about it). And I don´t know if fear for that boy or not.

But at least they now where she is. What will they do? (I still don´t know!)

More questions about wonderland had been answered but it´s a milestone for the whole truth. Mwahahaha!

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Also… Regarding the question in the past chapter about the dream she was in:

In the Diamond game there is that lake that gradually fills up with rain that represents Alice´s regrets and sins and all the ice are like all the her emotions freezing for not warming up to anyone or something like that. It is also mentioned by Joker there that the place is like the prison, and the prison is supposed to be the place where Alice ends every time she gets lost because she ends prisoner of her indecisions, and in Diamond it is where Joker tries to for her to see "reality" so the lake is the place where you end prisoner of your past and your "sins" , but by sins they seem to mean what she can´t forgive herself for. Also Alice says that she though the place was a dream but that it was also real because dreams can be very close to reality, I guess like the prison that is an actual place too.

In Aria´s case, you can see it just the place calling her and wanting to show her something (Didn´t Nightmare mentioned that Wonderland has a sort of will of its own?... that was a rhetoric question) or something more personal, maybe both. The lake is already filled up and completely frozen but it´s not all due to herself because she truly has no regrets and she has no problem walking over her won past if needed and can cross it without falling onto it.

We also have that Alice freezing because she couldn´t get past her old memories and feelings and form new ones while Aria is considered a more frozen state because she is unable to hold onto any emotions for long.

The reflection was also meant to show what the reality Alice forgot was, but was there to show for Aria is she has no real memories? The figure reminding Aria of Alice in Diamond and in the opposite but same happening in Alice´s dream back at the other side of the mirror also shows a reflected reality. Alice originally was obsessed with her perfect sister Lorina, a mix between awe, idealization and jealously, and she´s starting to get self conscious because of Aria; but at the same time, Aria is very disgusted with the situation about Alice because it goes completely against her principles and beliefs but knows that such is expected from the foreigner and needed by this world, which lets her expectations from everything and everyone in this world drop to the negative side of the scale.

Of course Aria is completely unaware and oblivious to all that. No deeper explanation, just acts for lady literal if you please! She doesn´t get it. Well, at least she put on those earrings back.

And course she really does not want anything to do with such world at all anymore and she is ready to go on ahead and back to her world, but I doubt Wonderland will let her go that easy because maybe it does want her there or maybe even "needs" her there.

Now it's a race against time before they reach her or she heals enough to go back.

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Did anyone notice that Bunsen already found where the Dodo is last chap?