The day after Alyce went to Poison Ivy's, the Jeep Cherokee was loaded up with the antiques that Hatter and Alyce had taken. In broad daylight, the Wonderlandian couple drove down to police headquarters and quickly unloaded the dozen items – two fairly large, four medium, and six small things – with the help of the Tweedles.

Once everything was at the bottom of the steps, Jervis readied his pistol, nodded at Dee and said, "Stand-by until Alyce is clear of the building."

"Yes, sir," Dee responded dully.

"You sound bored, Dee. Try to sound more enthusiastic next time."

"Yes, sir!" Dee exclaimed, standing at attention and giving Jervis a small salute.

Alyce gave him a look and shook her head. "You're not right. Of course, neither am I. Heh, I'm mad, you're mad…we're all mad here!"

Jervis grinned broadly at her. "Be careful, my dear, and be quick. Don't want us getting caught now, do we?"

He looked at her a bit seriously here, and Alyce said, "I'll be in and out in few seconds. Time me."

She gave Hatter a wink, and before he could get his gold pocket-watch out, Alyce and the antiques were gone – as if in the blink of an eye. Jervis' jaw dropped.

'That's the first time I've seen her do that!'

Just inside the door of police H.Q., Alyce appeared with the entire dozen of antiques. A few officers cautiously approached her when they spotted her. Alyce smiled mischievously at them, curtsied, and blinked back to the Jeep before any of them knew what happened.

Back outside, Jervis guessed that it had only taken her about five seconds to vanish in and vanish back out.

Awed, Jervis asked, "What was that you just did?"

Alyce grinned. "I'll tell you on the way back to the hideout. Let's get out of here before they realize we're right outside the front doors."

"Good idea. Dee! Drive!"

The three hopped in the Jeep, antique-free, and started heading back to the hideout. Jervis kept glancing behind them every so often to make sure none of the cops were following them. They weren't. Jervis let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and smiled at Alyce.

"Okay, what was that vanishing and reappearing act you did back there? You were like the Cheshire Cat!"

"Hmm? Oh, that's just blinking," Alyce answered off-handedly.

"Blinking?"

"Yes, blinking. It's a type of teleportation that takes years to master. My parents first discovered I could do it when I was very young. Six, they told me. My father could blink as well, and began teaching me how to control it. It's something that requires a lot of concentration. I can only blink to places I can see with my own eyes. My father was able to blink across town. In time, I should be able to do the same."

She said all of this nonchalantly, and Jervis found himself staring at her in fascination for the umpteenth time since they'd met. It's been about two weeks now, and they were growing ever stronger both as a couple and as a criminal duo.

Jervis looked over at her as Dee casually drove the route back to their hideout. The sun shown brightly upon her face, making her squint her green eyes a little. She appeared to be off in her own Wonderland, and he wondered what she was thinking of. Reaching out, he lightly stroked her brunette-auburn tresses. She smiled a little and glanced his way. Jervis grinned and gazed into her eyes. Alyce had felt good to him the night they'd made love. She felt right in every way, and he wanted her forever.

******

That same evening, Hatter and Alyce were perched on top of a rooftop. They were waiting for a news chopper to spot them so that their antics would be displayed for all of Gotham to see.

'I do believe that's a news bird coming our way,' Jervis thought with a grin as he looked skyward and spotted a local Gotham City News chopper swinging their way.

"Okay, Alyce. Now!" he told Alyce, who started throwing cash and jewels over the side of the building.

The Wonderlandian couple kept about two-thirds of what they'd stolen in cash and gems. Now, they were about ready to begin the first move of the grand game of chess they wanted to play against the Jabberwocky.

Jervis waited until the GCN helicopter saw them and began to hover about fifty feet from where they were. He saw the light on the camera, grinned, and then picked up handfuls of stolen goods and threw it over the side of the five-story office building alongside Alyce. Hatter watched as funds and pretties they'd stolen purely to test out a new controlling device fell to the busy streets below.

He could see people along the streets stop and let out an exclamation before scampering around to pick up jewels, then jumping up to grab at slowly falling bills. Cars crashed into each other around the building as the drivers scrambled out of their vehicles to grab the cash and jewels alongside the pedestrians.

"Look at them, Alyce, so mundane in thought. They're like mice to cheese when it comes to anything monetary. They have no clue that happiness is in the heart and mind," Jervis commented with an arrogant smile.

"And the spirit, Jervis. Happiness is in spirit as well," Alyce said. "And you're right. They do not know themselves as well as they'd like to think."

Jervis looked at her, took her hand, and grinned. "Exactly, my dear. I was hoping that one day – not today, not tomorrow, possibly not for several months – that we could help…change their minds. Make them see what a Wonderland Gotham can be. Our own little Utopian kingdom."

"Can I be Queen of this Gotham Wonderland?" Alyce asked flirtatiously, giving him a coy glance.

"Of course, my dear! You shall be Queen Alyce, ruler beside yours truly, who shall be King Hatter!"

He smiled boyishly here, and Alyce giggled before tossing the last of the stolen goods over the side.

"That's everything, Jervis," she said, gathering up the empty sacks.

"Then let's go. You can blink us back down, right?"

He gave her a slightly nervous look, and she just grabbed onto his jacket and teleported them back to just beside the Jeep. Jervis wobbled a little bit before gathering his bearings and shook his head.

"That's such a strange sensation. It's almost like the White Queen is dragging you along, only much worse. I daresay it's almost like I've been de-materialized and put back together upon reappearing," Hatter said a bit woozily.

Alyce put a hand on his shoulder to help steady him and laughed a little.

"You do 'de-materialize'. Sort of. We actually travel in a different plane of existence when we blink. It's hard to explain."

"…Let's go home," Jervis said after a moment of staring, thinking of how much a Wonderland Alyce was.

******

"What have you got for me, Jim?" the gravelly voice of Batman asked from the shadows of Commissioner James Gordon's office at police headquarters.

Jim started a little, startled at Batman's sudden appearance. He should be used to this kind of thing by now. It's been several years since he started working with the Dark Knight to take down Gotham's criminals. Somehow, though, Batman always seemed to keep surprising the Commissioner. The only thing he's really gotten used to was the vigilante's vanishing act.

"Uh, we have a couple of tapes, Batman. Thought you might want to have a look at them and give us your opinion. It baffled Forensics," Gordon said, recovering quickly from his startle.

He took one of the two tapes from on top of his desk and went over to a TV/VCR and popped it in. Batman moved into the light of the room and watched silently. The camera showed two large, bulky men dressed as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum throwing fireballs at the security guards and one of the tellers, catching them on fire and killing them. Batman's eyes narrowed. Next, the camera showed the Mad Hatter shooting a gun and killing another teller before the "Tweedles" helped the manager load two large sacks of cash.

"Did the security tapes pick up any vehicles outside?" the Dark Knight asked.

Gordon sighed. "Unfortunately, no. The camera was working out there, but no signs of a getaway vehicle."

"Hmm, could be a cloaking charm…" Batman mumbled.

"Excuse me?" Jim queried.

"It's nothing. What's on the other tape?"

Gordon removed the first tape and put the second one in. This one jumped around to different angles of the jewelry store about every five seconds. First, it showed a thick, eerie fog beginning to engulf the room, making the camera views somewhat obscured. Then, they could barely make out a woman's figure in a blue and white dress disappear from in front of the counter and reappear behind the employee behind the counter in the blink of an eye. The next thing to happen were employees being hurled by an invisible force into the glass counters, smashing them to pieces. Luckily, no one was too seriously injured during this heist.

"We've had our video analysts look at both of these tapes over and over again, and they can't find any evidence of them being tampered with. My first thought was that Hatter is working with a Meta-human. Do you know if this is true, Batman?" Gordon asked, crossing his arms and leaning against his desk.

Batman narrowed his eyes, and then, "Do you believe in magic and witches, Jim?"

Gordon looked at the Dark Knight as if he'd gone crazy. "Not really, why?"

"You'd better start. I'd like to take these tapes and analyze them further. See if I can find something your analysts couldn't."

"All right. I'll need them back in no less than two days," Gordon replied, a little perplexed by Batman's odd choice of question and response.

Suddenly, a call came over the police radio.

"Skktt! Small riot in downtown Gotham near a cluster of office buildings located on East Fifth and Hemlock Avenue. Requesting multiple S.W.A.T. units to maintain chaos to a minimum. Skktt!"

A second later, his secretary came rushing in and told Gordon that the riot was all over the news. When Gordon turned to tell Batman he had to check it out, the Dark Knight was nowhere to be seen. Jim smirked and headed out of the office to look at the TV.

He gasped when he saw the Mad Hatter and Alyce spilling cash and gems onto the streets.

"What in the world are they up to?"

******

The following afternoon, a popular costume shop was hit. The only items stolen were a set of well-made Alice in Wonderland costumes, minus the Hatter and Alice attire. Then, another bank was struck. It was the same branch as the last, only it was on the other side of town. Hatter did pretty much the same procedure as last time; only he didn't have to kill anyone. Alyce also joined him on this heist, and before they left, she left a present for the Jabberwocky.

"This is my first time setting a magical trap, you know," Alyce was saying as she set a spell upon the bank's vault. "Though it should work almost like the defensive wards at home."

"Hehehe…We'll mess with the Jabberwocky's mind, and then we can truly test the new devices," Hatter said with a mad giggle and a devious grin.

Alyce grinned as well, and once the spell was finished, she turned back to Jervis and said, "Alright, let's get out of here."

"Excellent! Now we need to do some more work to our abode before this plan fully works itself out. Dee! Dum! Load the cash into the Jeep. Hurry! There is much to do!"

******

That night, Batman did some investigating at the site of the second bank robbery. He took out a pair of special binoculars and scanned the room. Bullet holes riddled the ceiling, and the walls were scorched here and there, presumably from the Tweedles' fireballs. Batman knew Alyce was behind that. It seems that somehow, Tetch and McArthur had combined technology with magic to both control and give their victims a magical power. At least, this was what the Dark Knight's instincts were telling him, and they rarely ever led him astray.

When he scanned the vault, the binoculars picked up an unknown energy field surrounding the entrance. Batman approached the vault cautiously. He didn't see anything outwardly out of place, and the binoculars didn't pick up anything else. Putting a finger to his cowl, he radioed Alfred.

"Alfred. I'm going to send you some information the binoculars picked up around the vault. See if you can find out what it is. I'm going to keep looking around."

"Very good, sir. Shall I have a cup of soup ready when you return?"

Batman smirked, flipping open the top of his left glove. He punched in a code on his palm-top computer to download the information from the binoculars to the computer. Once that was complete, he punched in another code to have the information sent to the Batcave for analysis.

"I'll be home late. Don't wait up," the Dark Knight finally answered Alfred before he cut off communication.

Putting away his binoculars, Batman carefully continued to inspect the threshold of the vault. Suddenly, he felt an intense tingling sensation course throughout his body. He quickly readied a bat-a-rang. The tingling sensation seemed harmless enough, but who knows what else or who else could be lurking.

"Jabberwocky…"

He heard a voice whisper.

"Who's there?" Batman asked harshly.

As if in answer, he saw a white rabbit hop into the vault, stopping every few seconds to sniff around. When he went to approach the animal, it disappeared.

"What the…?"

Batman then heard a loud banging, as if someone were hammering on the safes inside the vault, yet no one was there.

"OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!" the same voice screamed in the Dark Knight's ear, making him whip around to face…nobody.

Batman slowly began to back out of the vault.

"Follow the White Rabbit…" the voice – a woman's voice – whispered.

'That's McArthur's voice…'

The same rabbit that Batman had seen hopping into the vault now appeared next to one of the teller windows. He went over to it, cautiously, and looked around the desk. There were no notes or anything suspicious, so the Dark Knight tried to look at the rabbit to see if it had any sort of controlling device on it. When he went to pick it up, it suddenly changed form. First, the teeth elongated into sharp fangs, the eyes became large and psychotic, and the body grew to the size of a medium dog. The next thing Batman knew, the creature was lunging itself at him, jaws snapping. Batman began to fight it off, and after a moment, he caught himself fighting nothing but air. Breathing heavily and trying to figure out what was happening to him, the Dark Knight once again put a finger to his cowl.

"Alfred, have you found anything on the energy the binoculars picked up?"

"No, sir. Not really. It has some components of an electromagnetic field, but there's another component that doesn't match any known source."

There was a pause, then, "Sir, is everything all right?"

Batman, his mind reeling from the hallucinations, said, "Yes. Everything's fine, Alfred. I have some more investigating to do. Let me know if you find anything else."

Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a black figure in his peripheral vision. Instinctively, he threw the bat-a-rang towards it, but the weapon hit nothing but air. When the Dark Knight blinked, the figure was gone. The only thing Batman could figure was that he had tripped some sort of spell trap. He knew it was Hatter's work, simply due to what the voices were saying, not to mention the rabbit. If it hadn't been for those two things, the Dark Knight would have thought immediately of this being more of the Scarecrow's modus operandi. Of course, Crane used gases, not raw energy, to instill fear into his victims.

Batman didn't like magic-users, and he really didn't like having to get help from someone he hardly knew. However, if he expected to win against the Hatter's magical accomplice, he knew he was going to need Miss Bonham's help…before the hallucinations got the better of him.