Akamatsu Ken and Kodansha own Mahou Sensei Negima!

The Walt Disney Company owns all the Disney stuff.

I make no money from this.

Thanks to Shadow Crystal Mage for proofreading and adding several jokes. The best ones.


The Keys of the Kingdom.


Chapter Eight.


"Vigilante!" Tohsaka Rin gasped. "That's him!"

Her eyes were fixed on the gigantic screen dominating the view of the suspiciously Times Square-like intersection they were overlooking, standing on the rooftop of another building while Yue scanned the crowd below with a pair of binoculars Deadpool had lent her after a polite petition, a lot of petty and childish refusal, a lengthy ethical and philosophical debate, a game of rock-paper-scissors, and finally a swift kick to the balls.

The screen showed Vigilante himself dashing heroically through the night, although from a back angle that was far from being flattering, swinging with his gas gun in hand towards some sort overgrown rat in a yellow jumpsuit who stood on top of a power line tower, electricity crackling all around him.

"And so we commemorate the one-year anniversary of 'The Starducks Caper', the last known adventure of Saint Canard's masked avenger, Darkwing Duck!" a narrator exposited all across the intersection, to the indifference of the masses transiting below.

"Darkwing Duck?!" Rin cried. "His name was Darkwing Duck?! No wonder he never wanted to tell me! What kind of name is Darkwing Duck?!"

"I'm Mickey Mouse," King Mickey had to remind her, frowning as he carefully checked a map he had pulled out of his robes, with little evident success. He even would scratch his head at times, then turned it over 180 degrees. Then turned it over to look at its back. He folded into a paper hat. "I really need to stop using ACME maps and switch to google..."

"This is insane," Yue muttered to herself. "This society is either populated by an incredible variety of wildly disparate species, or the world's biggest furry convention is in town. Good thing Haruna isn't here..."

"You don't mean that," Nodoka told her.

"Please let me cope, Nodoka," Yue replied.

It had taken them a lot of effort to get that far from the top of Saint Canard Tower without being noticed along the way. Nodoka's staff could only carry two passengers from one building to another at a time, and while Deadpool did have a grappling gun with him, nobody had been exactly thrilled about swinging around with him, dozens of stories about ground level. The others were capable of jumping between the buildings, but that put them in plain view of the rather obscene amount of security cameras all over the place, and everyone knew enough to know that anyplace with THAT many cameras was someplace you didn't want to be caught on camera in (the librarians has read the classics and currents of dystopian fiction, Rin was naturally paranoid as a magus, Kotaro has occasionally gone Solid Snake Sneaking in the name of a paycheck, Mickey had merely muttered something about a 'wascally wabbit' and Deadpool had been kicked in the balls again).

"Before the days of the Quackwerks Corporation," the narration continued, and Rin paid it every bit of attention she could muster,"Saint Canard depended on unlicensed vigilantes with, at best, questionable tastes in fashion."

"I'll say!" Deadpool said. "All that purple clashing together, yuck! The lack of pants is a nice touch, though. Screams 'liberated badass who doesn't care about others' opinions' oh so much! I think I'll copy that, actually..."

"Take those pants off and I'll toss you to the pavement," Kotaro warned him.

"Actually," Yue observed, feeling vaguely voyeuristic, "around half of the animal people walking through those streets seem to be lacking any pants. Mostly the male birds, which sort of makes sense, since cloaca don't stick too much. They are arresting a pantsless dog-person over there, so it might be mammals are still required full attire. Which I guess makes sense, with the external genitalia and all..."

Deadpool sighed. "Just my luck! I'm finally surrounded by public half-nudity everywhere, so of course I'm also with children so I can't have a good, long—"

"Finish that sentence and I'll toss you to the pavement," Mickey warned.

Deadpool made the 'obviously lifting an eyebrow' face he somehow could make despite the full mask. "And how do you know about those things? Shouldn't you be some wholesome icon for the whole family?"

"A far cry from the safe streets we have today thanks to Quackwerks' Crimebots!" the satisfied narration finished. "For the Quackwerks Satellite Network, I'm Chip Dipson! Dip Dopson will be back tomorrow."

"... I don't understand," Rin weakly said. "So whatever happened to Vigilante? One year? Has he been... dead ever since? Is this how he—"

"He should still be alive," King Mickey rolled the map up and tucked it back in. "And we'd better find him before we can leave this place."

"So you can j-j-jam it in again?" Deadpool asked.

"J-J-Jam it in?" Rin snorted. "What a tasteless joke!" She sneezed. "Gah, stupid city air!"

He chuckled. "Oh, you don't know half of it... Anyway, Ears, really, how does finding the fashion nightmare help us get back home? Do you have to stab him again for it to work? Or can I do it this time?"

Mickey frowned, looking down at the city. "You're going to need disguises. But, how to get them? I have no money on me, and yours won't be accepted here, and—"

Nodoka looked up at the moon in the sky, calculated the time from its position, and then pulled The Create out again. "Sir? Um, I think I could help with that..."


Wonderland:

"Ah! This is horrible! I can't beleive we've been arrested! By a queen, even! That's a big thing with us Welsh! ARGH! I'm a horrible teacher! Now my students won't take me seriously anymore, and I'll be forced to retire in disgrace and scandal!" Negi panicked as he, Asuna, Skuld, Alice and Gadget were made to walk together into a tight circle, with the armed guards surrounding them. "Wait, what did we do, anyway?"

A Nine of Hearts cleared his throat and declared, "You have been sighted in the company of one of the dark creatures who tried to steal the Queen's heart this morning! Hence, you are charged with conspiracy to commit attempted regicide!"

"We were KILLING that monster!" Asuna protested. Then she stole curious glances at the paper-thin sides of the guard and asked him, "What's with your inner organs anyway?"

"The prisoner has just shown an interest in inner organs! Further proving she's a thief of such organs! Let it stand on the royal record!" a Seven of Hearts proclaimed.

A Five of Hearts glanced at a Two of Hearts. "Are we supposed to keep records of arrests? Since when?"

"Never mind, I'll do it," offered a Three of Hearts, pulling a pen out and writing the statements down on himself.

"Asuna-san, please," Skuld groaned out of a corner of her mouth, "just leave the talking to us, okay?"

"Gentlemen, please!" Alice asked. "Let's be reasonable here, will we? I was as surprised as anyone can be when I saw the Professor was a warlock, but I'm rather sure he's a benevolent sort of—"

"Uh, we prefer 'mage' or wizard' these days," Negi said. "Warlocks are... not nice people."

"We have no problem with anyone practicing magic or not," the Seven of Hearts said, "since magic doesn't exist, the Queen said it so. However, you were still seen with a Heart-Thief, and that is a crime punishable by death!"

The Four of Hearts played an ominous beat on a drum.

"Who saw us, then?" Skuld asked. "Who called you guys, and for that matter, why didn't you step in to take care of that 'Heart-Thief' before?"

"It doesn't matter to you, betrayers to the crown, who tipped us off your felonies," the Five of Hearts huffed, as a rapid chuckle was heard from a nearby tree, from a wide grin half-hidden between the leaves. "As for why we couldn't arrive sooner... our legs are made of layered pasteboard!"

"Okay, that's good enough a reason," Negi allowed, "But we aren't in complicity with the Heart-Thief, I swear! You should ask that man over..." Then he realized the Mad Hatter was not there anymore; he had disappeared from the spot where he had dropped minutes ago. "Oh feathers!"

"That dirty rat escaped while we weren't looking!" Asuna said.

Gadget coughed delicately into a fist.

"What?" Asuna asked. "You're a mouse, not a rat!"

"Many of my best friends are— actually, now that I think about it, no rat has ever been kind at all to me. Never mind then, sorry," Gadget replied.

"That'll be enough!" the Eight of Hearts shouted. "You'll now be brought before the Queen for a fair and benevolent trial where you'll be found guilty and beheaded! So start moving already, hooligans!"

"What? Oh, no, you can't do that!" Alice protested. "We haven't done anything wrong, and I couldn't possibly have tried to steal anyone's heart! I was busy elsewhere all through this morning; you can ask the Cheshire Cat, or the Dodo, or Mr. Caterpillar, or the White Rabbit, or..."

"Save your lies for the jury and the Queen, who are wise to them!" Seven of Hearts said.

Eight of Hearts looked at him. "You are aware that was a subversive statement, aren't you?"

"What? No!" Seven of Hearts gasped.

"It is," Four of Hearts said. "You have implied the most fair and benevolent Queen is well versed on lies."

"You'll probably be beheaded," Two of Hearts nodded.

Seven of Hearts made a truly anguished expression, then dropped his spear and resignedly joined Negi's prisoner group.

Negi looked at Skuld. "What do you think? I'm sure we can take them down and escape..."

Skuld sighed. "Let's play along for the time being. If the course of history in this realm is to be properly followed, Alice will have to pay testimony and be put on trial. Maybe if we're there we might alleviate any further damage our interference might have caused."

"Do I have to? Why? I object to that notion!" Alice cried.

"Silence! The prisoners will remain silent from this point on! That applies to you as well," one of the soldiers prodded the chest of the March Hare with his lance. The Hare, who had gone back to drinking his tea without a care, just blinked.

"Will there be tea at the trial?" he asked.

"Well, the Queen always likes enjoying a cup and pastries after the executions," Six of Hearts said.

The Hare jumped back to his feet with a very wide grin. "Then let's not make the lady and her tea and pastries wait! Is this her unbirthday too? Because I'm afraid I don't have any ungifts on me..."

"Oh, for the love of—!" Five of Hearts began just pushing him away, towards the clearing's edge.

Sometimes, it paid to be easily forgettable, Chamo thought as his head carefully peeked out of the bushes he had been hiding into after the cards' arrival. He waited just a couple of moments after Negi and the others were led away, and then jumped after their trail, moving as stealthily as possible. Coward or not, he was not the kind of filthy coward to leave his brother and four cute girls at the chopping block! He'd have to find a convenient hiding place though. Alice's skirt would do, it was so wide and poofy you could hide another loli under there...

Once he was gone as well, the large grin on the tree moved further ahead, and began laughing aloud, as the striped figure of a cat appeared around it...


Saint Canard:

"—so, as you can see, Sempai," Nodoka explained patiently as they walked down the suburbs, "I just chose that species for you because of, well, your twin-tails! I wasn't trying to insult you, really! We hardly even know you at all!"

"I suspected that much," Rin dryly said, the short tail that now stuck from the back of her skirt wagging slightly behind her. Her small nose was now cold, round and black; and her twin-tails had been replaced by two furry brown dog ears of the same length. "Just making sure."

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Deadpool asked Mickey, who simply walked along with his hood down, his mouse head exposed for everyone to see.

"I'm enjoying being able to stroll around as myself, but of course I'd never enjoy seeing human beings subjected to uncomfortable changes," Mickey piously said.

"Uh-huh," said Kotaro, who was walking in his wolf form, with a loose shirt that Nodoka had summoned for him over his increased frame. "And yet, you're making no effort to hide that giant key of yours..."

Mickey raised the Keyblade over his head as they passed by next to a strolling couple of parakeet-people, and loudly said, "Mickey, Donald and Goofy's Locksmithing! We smith locks! Coming soon to this neighborhood!"

"... ah," Kotaro blandly said. Then he stared at Deadpool. "And you? That's gotta be the crappiest costume I've ever seen. You shoulda accepted the form Library-chan tried to give you..."

"This one works just as well!" Deadpool protested, pointing a thumb at his own chest while wearing a cross-eyed, badly sewn together dog head over his mask. "Hey, you!" he called out for a fat pig who was passing by in his nightly jog. "I look like a normal, average denizen of this fair city, don't I?"

The pig stopped, blinked at him, and asked, "You're a friend of Herb Muddlefoot, aren't you?"

"Well, I'd be a friend of anyone with that kind of name if I only—"

"We are," a resigned Mickey pushed Deadpool forward, quickening his step. Then he hissed at the man, "Really, you should have taken that form! It's a miracle we've made it this far without being stopped by one of those robots!"

"Who would ever suspect anything bad about Paul J. Dogpool, accountant and perfect model citizen? That's me, by the way," Dogpool replied. "And besides, for the last time, I wasn't going to be a beaver! Why should I? Just because I'm a Canadian (maybe, damn memory implants!)? That's racist and stereotypical!"

"How about a moose, then?" Nodoka shyly suggested, the twitching Kero pretending to be a pendant hanging from her neck. Nodoka and Yue wore matching cat ears and tails, also brought on them from the magic of The Create. "You like moose, don't you?"

"That's even worse!" Dogpool cried.

"A wolverine?" Nodoka asked now.

"You're doing this to annoy me, aren't you?! That's supposed to be MY role!"

Mickey massaged the bulging veins on his head back down and sighed, looking up at a street sign. "Well, looks like we've finally hit Avian Way. This was the last known place of residence of Launchpad McQuack, the sidekick for the person we're looking for."

"They prefer 'junior partner', I think," Yue said.

"No, he's definitely a sidekick," Mickey said. "You'll see"

"Launchpad McQuack?" Rin echoed, a corner of her mouth stretching. "Not to be, well, a female dog, but again, what kind of insane name is that?"

"You namist!" Dogpool accused her.

Somewhere else, Chisame sneezed.

"An edgy gray-haired bishounen, Roger Rabbit, even Oswald..." Mickey was muttering to himself as he closed his eyes and shook his head. "Woody Woodpecker, Doraemon, Mortimer, even Howard..." as he spoke, the motions of his hands slowly became more and more desperate and urgent. "So many, so many, I could have stumbled into to share this quest, and I had to—"

He sighed very deeply, then stopped before one of the houses, a charming suburban residence all painted white and preceded by a well trimmed garden. The others stopped behind him. "Okay, deep breath, deep breath, keep your cool, Mickey..."

"You feeling okay there, King-Dude?" Dogpool asked.

"YES!" he asked, loud and clear, and all too stiff, before lowering his voice back to normal. "This is it. 357 Avian Way. Donald once told me, Mr. McQuack, who also used to be his uncle's private pilot, lived here and—"

He then realized everybody else had left him behind and Yue was ringing on the front door. Mickey exhaled another exasperated sigh and quickly joined them, pushing his way to the forefront. He straightened and placed a hand on his own chest as the door went open. "Good evening, Mr. Launchpad! Sorry to bother you, but I'm a friend of your boss' nephew Donald, and—"

"Vigilante!" Rin gasped, pointing dramatically in a Kaleid-y fashion.

"— yeah, also a Vigilante who... what? No!" Mickey said.

"Launchpad McQuack doesn't live here anymore," the duck who had just opened the door coldly told them. "And absolutely no Vigilantes have ever lived here either, and... wh-what is that creature with the badly sewn head doing to my mailbox now?!"

Dogpool lowered his leg and innocently asked, "What? We dogs are supposed to do this... right?"


Mahora:

"See, Rito, see?" the tall, shapely, pink-haired Lala Satalin Deviluke cheerfully said as she led her fiancé Yuuki Rito towards the large spaceship that had crashed in the middle of the Southern woods, close to the river that ran through Mahora. As soon as it had entered Earth's gravitational pull after breaking through the dimensional barrier, it had triggered the surveillance systems Lala had set up in the event one of her more amorous and bothersome suitors would arrive, looking for her. "I told you it'd be right here!"

Rito gulped and nodded absently, stepping closer to the downed craft, on shaky legs but trying his best to keep a brave face on. When the crisis broke out all over Mahora, spreading from several focal points that had manifested themselves at once, the faculty had been too pressed to keep the safety of the student body as their main priority, so it seemed they hadn't been able to send any staffers there yet. Naturally, that HAD TO mean it fell on him to help Lala stop those invaders before their latest madcap attempt to force her into marriage would wreck large portions of the school again.

Already those weird alien thingies they had been sending down were pushing the students into a frenzy, so things were bad enough by that point. No need whatsoever for them to get any worse!

Well, to be perfectly honest, at least one staffer had been dispatched to deal with the UFO anomaly, the local expert assigned by the Galaxy Federation's contacts with Mahora. A woman who was even taller and more buxom than Lala, who walked along them quietly puffing on a cigarette, and not even bothering to keep the housecoat she wore over her pink negligee closed. It was no wonder Rito would prefer to keep advancing towards the unknown of the ship rather than looking back at Mikado Ryoko-sensei, who obviously was either too lazy and shameless to dress properly when called in the middle of the night, or too devoted to her job to even pause to cover herself when needed.

"It doesn't look like any design I'm familiar with," Ryoko observed, more interested than anything else. "Princess?"

Lala shook her head, scanning the ship up and down with a small device sporting three large red, swirling eyes. Miraculously, the device hadn't malfunctioned and stripped everybody naked yet. "It barely looks functional! Certainly not aerodynamic enough. It's the kind of design I'd come up when I was a child. But then again, it can be excused, since humans are still so new to space travel…"

"Humans?" a confused Rito stopped. "Why would you say this thing was made by humans? Just because it looks clunky?"

"Well, that, and because I get readings of two human beings inside," Lala said.

"What?!" Rito did a double take. Then he shouted towards the half open door on the ship's left flank," Oi, whoever's in there! C-Come out and leave that ship now! A-And let your human hostages go! … please?!"

There was some rustling and a short discussion from the inside, and out the door peeked a small head with large clear eyes and bright pink hair, made into two side-tails tied with white bows. Followed, a moment later, by an identical head, different only because of a more fearful expression, and the fact its hair was made into twin bums. Ryoko cursed under her breath.

"Ah! But if it isn't Paru's boyfriend Rito-chan!" Narutaki Fuuka greeted the boy, before recognizing the girl who had been awing Mahora over the last few weeks as the newest sensation at campus. "And Deviluke-sempai, as well! And Mikado-sensei! Why are you here?"

A vein bulged through the skin of Rito's forehead. "Why are we here? Why are you here?! And don't call me Rito-chan! Only Haruna-chan can do that! I'm your sempai!"

Fuuka rolled her eyes. "It's rude to answer questions with other questions and an order, sempai. Anyway, our ninja camp's near here! Kaede-nee says we aren't skilled enough to use hers yet, so we set our own!"

"Okay," Ryoko said, "and why are you inside of a spaceship, then?"

"W-Well," Fumika gulped, "we were, ahhhh, setting a campfire at our, ah, our camp, when we saw this, this shooting star, and then we saw it falling into the woods, and Fuuka-chan we should check it out! So we dressed up, I mean, we put the fire out, and came… I mean, we came here, not there, I mean…"

"We came both here and there," Fuuka pointed out, as Fumika blanched, Ryoko frowned, and Rito and Lala just scratched their heads in confusion. Thankfully for Rito. "That is, we saw this and assumed it was another failed experiment from the Space Exploration Club, so I told Fumika-chan we should check it from the inside…"

"You saw an alien-looking vessel crashing in the wilderness, and your first instinct was to walk inside to have sex?!" Mikado said in utter disbelief. She was a kinky woman herself, but never to Darwin Award extremes.

"To have what?!" Rito squawked, arms flailing.

Fuuka sniffed and lifted her nose while an embarrassed Fumika hid her face against her sister's arm. "You didn't see us doing it, you can't prove we did it, so we didn't do it! The sex, I mean. But off the record, the more forbidden and dangerous, the better, don't you see?"

"But, but, but, but, but, but you're sisters!" Rito cried.

"Aren't you aware," Ryoko evenly asked the twins, "there are dangerous creatures of unknown origins currently swarming all over Mahora?"

"What?!" Fumika screamed.

"For real? Whoa, Sensei, if you're trying to get one over us for this, you'd better think a better lie…"

"Is Kaede-nee okay?!" Fumika cried.

Ryoko nodded. "The few students of 3-A we could locate are currently under Takahata-sensei's protection, and Nagase is with them. She's rather worried about the two of you, actually."

"Oh, so she didn't know about the secret camp, then!" Fuuka rubbed her chin and grinned. "We're better than I thought!"

"For the love of God, sisters!" Rito protested, livid. "That's forbidden, dangerous love! Lala, say something!"

"They did say the more dangerous and forbidden the better for them, didn't they?" Lala asked. "I think they're cute! They remind me a lot of my own sisters, just far more incestuous. Although not for a lack of trying on Momo's part…"

"LALA!" Rito yelled.

"Is anyone else with you?" Ryoko asked the Narutakis.

Fuuka shook her head. "This place was deserted when we arrived. Although there were those strange footprints all over the mud…" she pointed at a trail of very big footprints leading away from the ship. They looked like they belonged to rounded, oversized shoes.

"You saw footprints like those and assumed they belonged to the Space Exploration Club," a dismayed Mikado said.

"Well, in our defense, they are THAT weird," Fumika piped in.

As Mikado ran her hand down her own face, Lala stepped in, past the twins, and stared intently at the ship's controls, touching them lightly with her fingers. "Very cool…! Looks like a mental interface-based system! A basic design, so simple even a child with a Level 8 intellect could handle it!"

"What do you mean, Lala?" Rito asked, grumbling as he and Mikado reluctantly made their way in from the outside.

"It would appear," Lala hummed, her hand swiftly traveling over the panel, up and down and back, examining the configuration, "it runs based on the user's emotional spectrum. Specifically, it would seem to gain power and acceleration from happiness. Oh, I'm SO HAPPY to have made this discovery! Although I think I saw one vaguely similar of this, way back in—"

The door abruptly slammed shut. The ship began rattling back to life.

"LALA!" Rito yelled again.

"What did I do?!"


"AAAAAAIIIIEEEEEEE!" Fuuka and Fumika shrieked, hugging each other while the Gummi Ship zoomed through the atmosphere, up in a nearly perfect vertical line.

"Lala, what the hell are you doing?! Stop it now!" Rito screamed, stumbling around after losing all balance, and slamming into Ryoko's body, head sinking between her large breasts. "Ugugugugu!" he gurgled, jerking back while pressing a hand against his bleeding nose.

"Why, Yuuki-kun…!" Ryoko chuckled before bumping her head against a wall. "Oops!" she cringed, rubbing the bump amongst her hair with a hand.

Lala, however, just smiled in an impossibly wide way, eyes sparkling madly. Her tail had swirled around taking a heart shape. "This… This is incredible! For such a primitive model to reach this takeoff speed, reaching warp levels now! What is its secret? I just have to learn it! Ooohh, the challenge! The thrill of learning when one thought one had learned everything! This is the happiest day of my… recent… life!"

"Lala-sama!" the white, swirly-eyed decoration on Lala's head cried. "I'm always glad you're glad, but perhaps you should be a little less glad!"

"Ah? Why, Peke?" she asked, tilting her eyes up towards it.

"We're going to burn in space, my tummy is all upside down, and that thing is talking! Nee-chan I'm afraid!" Fumika wailed.

"Fumika-chan, one last glomp!" Fuuka sobbed, squeezing her sister's rump.

"What are you all making so much of a fuss about?" Lala tilted her head aside. "This is normal escape acceleration!"

"No, it isn't! And I've been in many flights before!" Ryoko disagreed, as this time she was the one to stumble and land with her breasts around Rito's head. Rito cried like a girl.

"Well," Lala pouted, keeping herself remarkably steady for such a takeoff, although the speed was diminishing as she pouted, "it is standard speed for Devilukean ships, at least!" Then her face brightened up as she toyed with more of the controls. "Ah! It's a multi-language function! Now it'll be even easier to control! Look, look, Rito, they have Khund! Saiyan! Legalese! Thanagarian! Czarnian, even! What's this? A warp function, too? Ooohooohooo, could it be…?"

As Lala's eyes mischievously took odd curved shapes taken straight from a gag manga, Rito yelled, hugging one of the seats behind her, "Dammit, Lala! Do you want to get us killed?! This isn't a toy, act your age, you can't simply—!"

"Warp Speed!" Lala cooed, gleefully slamming a finger on a large button consisting of three circles that was shaped vaguely like a mouse's head.

"—damn woman," Rito dryly said, one moment before the space around the ship shifted into a blinding flash, and Fuuka and Fumika's cries and mouths melded into one.


When Lala realized the ship was now floating, stranded and losing momentum, in the middle of a stellar layout she didn't recognize, she realized perhaps she had taken things a bit too far. This depressed her, since she had never intended to get Rito into any trouble.

As soon as her smile went down into a frown, the ship began quickly losing altitude, heading down at an even higher speed towards the small dark planet they had appeared close to after emerging from the other end of the warping vortex. The celestial body's gravity caught them just as Rito was beginning to wake up, wondering why he felt like he was breathing white cotton…

Then the impact of the violent landing, even though softened by the Gummi Ship's automatic shields, knocked him out a second time.


The Dark Lord sitting on the top of that world's tallest mountain saw the tiny shooting star speeding down towards the other end of his homeworld, past the borders of his black kingdom, close to the mage's domains. Something in his sinister heart stirred uncomfortably, in a way akin to that of a diminutive red hot needle prodding his charred soul. He had just had a presage about that apparition, and so he opened his wide, bat-like wings and roared.

The demons crawling and prowling all around the rocky mountain, under the starless sky, paused and looked up, at the giant who stared fire towards the other end of the planet. They stood silent before his inhuman growl. The horned nightmare sank his claws into the rock and dragged them across the hard surface, ripping through the ebony stone, seething miasma and poison.

Chernabog was not pleased.


Wonderland:

Now, Negi, Alice, Asuna, Skuld, the Hare, the Seven of Hearts and Gadget sat in that order, before a very tall stand painted in checkered red and black, in the middle of a gigantic garden surrounded by bushes of red roses (a few of which suspiciously dripped red paint). Behind the garden, there was a majestic white castle with four towers that were even higher than those of Mahora, so Asuna was fairly impressed by that, and not so much by the bizarre menagerie of colorful beings populating the audience and the jury stands of the hastily concocted royal court. She'd been to last year's Mahorafest after all, and honestly, it didn't compare.

Alice could recognize Mr. Dodo, happily puffing on his pipe, among the jury, along with the hapless looking Bill the Lizard, still coated in chimney ash. There also was an odd little man in a Fauntleroy suit, shaped like a white egg, which was mighty strange because he wasn't supposed to be in the book this story was based onto. There also were several other clothed animals whispering to each other and occasionally pointing thumbs at the defendants, then ran fingers across their own throats and shaking their heads.

Alice cringed at that, on the verge of tears, but Negi reached over to gently pat her small hand. "Don't worry. I happen to know some customs of this kingdom. The Queen of Hearts is always sentencing her subjects to death, but the King will always pardon them later, behind her back, before the sentences can be carried over," he told her in a low voice.

"That's in the book, Negi," a somber Skuld said, gripping her mallet. Thank the Father the card soldiers, with their paper brains, were not smart enough as to take it away from her. "In the book."

Negi gave her a confused glare. "Do you mean there are other versions?"

Skuld glared back. "You never watched a lot of TV, did you?"

"I wasn't even aware there was a book…" Asuna mused.

"Somebody wrote a book about my life without my consent? That is awfully rude from them," Alice opined. "And my family could have used the publishing royalties!"

"Ask Reverend Dobson next time you meet him," Skuld muttered.

Alice was about to ask what that nice man had to do with any of this when she was interrupted by the blare of a trumpet. "Mr. Rabbit!" Alice said with a returning smile.

The White Rabbit stood before the royal stand, lowering his golden trumpet and announcing in a loud and clear voice, "Everyone stand up for the most excellent, most glorious, most wise, most benevolent, most magnificent, most fair, most beautiful Red Queen of Hearts! And the King," he added as an afterthought, before quickly stepping aside and saluting.

The audience, the attendants and the jury all stood while an imposing, bulky figure in checkered red and black made her pompous way to the podium, bulbous nose high, thick, chubby arms cradling a golden scepter with a heart at its tip. Her dress was so long it hid her feet from sight, and there was a very tall golden crown on her head. Her hair was black and slick, bunched up into a bum, and her eyes were large, round and black, with long and thick eyelashes. Behind her marched a tiny man who had to hurry comically just to keep up to her step, short legs barely up to the task, his crown obviously too big for his size, his powdered wig only adding to his sense of ridiculousness rather than giving him any dignity. Negi was reminded of the fish that lived in the deepest trenches of the ocean, the females being huge, hideous predators, the males being diminutive parasites that fused on the females' bodies to act as their sperm banks.

The domineering figure of the Queen stopped behind her podium, took hold of a mallet, and slammed it down. "GUILTY! OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" she shouted.

"Guilty! Off with their heads!" the King nodded and clapped his doll hands.

Asuna glared at Negi. "So the King would spare us, right?"

"Darned Adaptation Decay!" Negi groaned.

Alice stood up, nearly jumping. "Your Honor, I mean, Your Majesty, I protest! We can't be found guilty until the trial is over!"

"Well, it is over now," the Queen's wide shoulders shrugged. "Is there any time limit on how lengthy trials should be? Because I don't remember ever writing any. And you have just further proved your guilt by objecting to my decisions."

"I'm all up for the trial to be over right now," the March Hare observed, "as long as it means the tea ceremony will follow immediately."

The Queen nodded and gestured with her mallet towards the Hare. "Do you see, young lady? Your accomplice accepts the Queen's wisdom. So we only will cut half of his neck."

"Oh, that's good to know!" the Hare breathed in relief. "Which half?"

Alice facepalmed.

Negi swallowed, then said, "But Your Majesty, wouldn't that mean your valuable time has been wasted, then? After all, they made you come here, only for you to dictate a verdict so quickly?"

The Queen blinked, frowned, then hesitantly said, "Well… there is some truth to your words. Who has dared staged a lightning trial, only to make me waste my time like this? It took me more time to come here than to listen to the testimony and debate the facts! Who is responsible for this?"

The assembled cards gasped, then began to frantically point at each other, over the next few moments, before all settling on pointing at Three of Hearts, even himself. Then he realized that and gasped in horror.

The Queen slammed her mallet again. "GUILTY! OFF WITH HIS HEAD!"

Then she looked at Negi's group again. "We will listen to your case now. This morning, one of your shadow creatures came to my palace and tried to steal my heart. It was only due to the efforts of our private guard, it could be driven off. Are you going to deny that fact?"

Negi was fairly impressed. For all of their silly appearances, those soldiers had to be very good at their job, if they could hold their own against a major Heartless like the Bat Knight.

"How are you so sure it was after your heart, ma'am?" Asuna asked. "Did it talk to you, or—"

"You will not answer a question with another question!" the Queen bellowed. "You will answer with the answer we asked from you!"

"Well," Alice said, "we aren't aware of the facts that transpired while we weren't here, but if you say that's what happened to you, we couldn't possibly put a Queen's word in doubt, so it must have happened, but…!"

"That sounds like a confession of guilt to us! Off with her head!" the Queen cried.

"Undeniably!" the King nodded quickly.

"I only said it must have happened, not that we had anything to do with it!" Alice protested.

"Where is our lawyer anyway?" Asuna asked. "For that matter, we weren't even given the 'you have the right to remain silent' speech! That arrest wasn't valid! I cry fowl!"

"Foul," Negi corrected.

"Whatever!"

"You should ask this man instead," Alice pointed at the Hare. "He was the one with the short, awful man who sicced that monster on us!"

"Which short awful man?" the Queen asked.

"A hatter," Gadget answered. "Who was quite mad."

"All of us are mad here," a crooning voice said from nowhere. "I am mad, you are mad, and the Queen is the maddest of all..."

"Who said that?" the Queen looked in all directions. "I want their head off! That's the worst thing anyone has ever said to us!"

"I, I don't know!" the King gulped, while he and everyone else also looked around for the source of the mysterious voice. "I could have been anyone!"

"Well, then we want for everyone's heads off!" the Queen huffed.

"Even the executioner's?" Skuld asked.

"Especially the executioner's!" the Queen waved a hand. "I never liked him anyway!"

"But who would behead the executioner, My Love?" the King asked.

"Couldn't he just behead himself? Why must I think think of everything? It's like no one else has a head on their shoulders!"

"But why would the executioner behead himself?" Alice asked.

"Because otherwise we'll have him beheaded, of course!" the Queen said, frankly appalled at this girl's stupidity. Perhaps she wouldn't miss anything after her head was off.

"I think," Negi opined, "our case should wait until the Mad Hatter is brought here to answer for his role in this affair. After all, a proper trial can't be carried over without the whole weight of the available evidence."

"And," Skuld added, "it would give you one more head to cut off."

"Skuld-san!" Negi hissed.

"Trust me! I know what I'm doing!"

The Queen scowled, then rubbed her round, doughy chin thoughtfully. "One more head…? One on which sits a tall, beautiful top hat…? Well, there is no problem that cannot be fixed by taking one more head off. Even so, how can I be sure you aren't just stalling for time?"

Skuld smiled. "You have my word on it! And that's the word of a goddess!"

"Should he be charming her by now?" Asuna muttered, looking between Negi and the Queen of Hearts with a frown. "Of all the times for his strange sex appeal to conk out on us..."


Traverse Town:

"My repeated failures at locating her can only mean one of two things," Hakase declared grimly, pacing back and forth before the assembled Chisame, Matoi, Sakurako and Cid at the latter's workshop. Cid sat smoking a cigarette and utterly failing to look like he gave a shit. Matoi melded like a shadow to Chisame's back, much to Hasegawa's annoyance; on unknown grounds, the older girl fell back onto old habits instead of sitting at Chisame's side, which would have been less unnerving. Sakurako put on her best long mortified face, twiddling her fingers on her knees. "Since we haven't scanned any new ships leaving or entering our current aerial space, either Chachamaru has returned to the sub-dimension located within Evangeline's cottage, or some new transdimensional anomaly has claimed her."

"So we just walk back into Eva's and see if she's there," Sakurako groaned. "What's so difficult about that? Why are we stalling so much?"

"Do we need to remind you of how Eva was acting last time we saw her?" Chisame asked.

"So what, even if she's grumpier than usual, she won't hurt us," Sakurako said. "I mean, she could have done it before leaving, and yet she didn't."

"Only because we weren't pushing ourselves on her and into her house," Chisame said. "As the current de facto leader, no matter how much I may hate it, you're all... ugh... my responsibility now, and I'm not letting you get close to Eva until we're sure it's safe."

"No, I think Sakurako-chan's right!" Satomi stopped to face her roommate. "Negi wouldn't want us to abandon a teammate… friend… daughter to her own devices near an Evangeline-san in an altered state of mind!"

"You can walk directly onto Eva-sama's toes and get frozen for all I care, Forehead-san," Matoi said, "but I won't have you undermining Chisame-sama's authority while doing so. And you know everybody else in Ala Alba will support Chisame-sama's decision. Since, you know, even Haruna-san's not that insane."

"Guys," Aerith pushed the workshop's door open, "can you spare a moment? I was knocking, but—"

"If necessary, I'll go alone with Sakurako-chan and Itoshiki-sensei!" Satomi argued.

"The skinny weirdo? Why him?" Cid asked.

"Well, he'll seize any chance he has to place himself in mortal peril…" Satomi explained.

"You have a visitor, in the event you're interested…" Aerith said.

"We're supposed to be all together in this! And we aren't going there all together, so we're staying here all together until Negi returns!" Chisame was telling Satomi.

"Chisame," Satomi said, "I'm Chachamaru's mother before being a member of Ala Alba! Don't force me to choose between one and the other!"

"And before being Chachamaru's mother, you were the daughter of… of… whoever your parents happen to be! Do you want me to give them the news I let their daughter get frozen to death by a mad vampire on an alien world?!"

"Out of all the sentences I never thought I'd ever heard…" Cid pondered.

Aerith clapped her hands loudly and stomped a foot on the floor. "Will someone start paying attention to me already?!"

Chisame, Matoi, Satomi, Sakurako and Cid all turned their heads around to look at her.

Aerith's cheeks went briefly pink before she hummed and hawed, with a fist on her mouth. "Sorry. Miss Chachamaru has just made it back. I thought you'd want to know…"

"Chachamaru!" Satomi joyfully ran past Aerith and into the arms of the girl who had just stepped behind her. "I knew no harm could have befallen such a perfect specimen of advanced engineering!" she said, sinking her face into Chachamaru's stomach as the gynoid tenderly caressed her hair.

"I'm glad to see you again as well, Mother," Chachamaru said quietly. "And you as well," she bowed for the others. "However, I feel I must ask… where is Negi-sensei at the time?"

"Well, he took the spaceship and left for another planet with Asuna-chan, Skuld-chan, Chamo-kun and some mouse girl we found in the ship," Sakurako answered. "Apparently they think they can find Negi's dad and some clues on how to get back home."

"Ah," Chachamaru said. "That would explain why, as Konoe-san told me while greeting me, Iinchou-san has been locked up in her room crying over the whole last day."

"Yeah, it would explain it," Chisame dryly said. "And how's Evangeline doing, by the way?"

"I'm not sure. She is undergoing some heavy emotional turmoil at the moment, and I decided to leave her handle it by herself for the time being. I believe she's having the midlife crisis my alternate self warned me of."

"Uh-huh. You did that after Eva kicked you out?" Chisame guessed.

"Well, that was a factor greatly involved in my decision, yes…"


To be Continued.