The seventh chapter.

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There was a long table set out under a tree in front of the house, and a large group of girls were sitting around it, having tea.

Yuki, as he neared them, recognized them to be a few of the girls that attended the same school he did. Each girl was wearing a Magical girl Cosplay uniform (The frilled sort, you could imagine) in various colours, and had all different sorts of animal's ears on headbands atop of their heads.

Rabbits, Tigers, Cats, Dogs, Monkeys… all sorts of ears. This was, of course, natural, as Magical girls usually had animals fused with them, sometimes for no reason at all.

The table was a large one, but all of them were crowded around one end. "No room!" snapped the head of the girls, who was wearing a great deal of hats (Yuki deduced that she must be the Hatter that the Kyou boy he had met had referred to), without even looking up. The rest of the girls echoed this as soon as the head girl started, also without looking up.

"Well, if you say so…" Yuki sighed, and was about to leave, when the Hatter finally deigned to look up at their intruder.

Her expression changed immediately. "Oh no! There's plenty of room here!" she called out quickly, beckoning madly for Yuki to return.

As all of the other girls noticed poor Yuki-chan as well, they immediately began shouting at once, so Yuki only caught parts of it "Yuuuuki! -Please, don't go! –We're sorry! –Please, come sit with us! –Have tea! –Please, Yuki! –There's enough room! -We can spare a seat!"

All of this thoroughly frightened the Nezumi, and it struck him as quite odd that all of these strange world's creatures knew his name, but so as not to be rude, he sat down in a great armchair, and looked around.

"Have some sake!" encouraged one of the other girls, who was sitting nearest to him, and was sporting Dog ears.

Yuki looked all around the table, but all there was, was a great deal of tea. "I don't see any Sake." Yuki remarked, looking most puzzled.

"There isn't any." smiled the girl at him dreamily, rather preoccupied.

"Then it wasn't very polite of you to offer it." Yuki glared, thoroughly sick of creatures with such bad manners.

"YES." agreed the girls near the Dog-eared girl, glaring at her viciously, as if they were ready to tear her to shreds.

"Oh, ah, sorry." said the girl quickly, blushing, and as the girls glared her down, she exchanged places with the girl furthest away from Yuki.

"Your hair needs cutting." said the Hatter, but immediately wished she had not. It might offend Prince Yuki! She had not said anything since Yuki had sat at the table, as she was carefully trying to figure out what to say to such a dashing boy as Yuki. Still, she had messed up.

"You shouldn't make personal remarks like that;" Yuki scolded her, looking rather annoyed "It's very rude."

The Hatter opened her eyes very wide upon hearing this, and looked urgently at her fellow cosplay-girl that was sitting next to her for backup.

The bunny-eared girl saw her chance to impress Prince Yuki, and opened her mouth to compliment him. However, all that came out was "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"

Yuki looked thoroughly puzzled again, but then smiled. "I can have some fun now!" he thought "I'm glad they've begun asking riddles- I believe I can guess that," he added aloud.

"D-do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?" stammered the ecstatic cosplay-girl.

"Exactly," answered Yuki simply.

"Then you should say what you mean!" blurted out one of the other girls, looking horrified.

"I do," Yuki hastily replied "at least- at least I mean what I say- that's the same thing, you know."

"Not at all!" laughed one of the other girls, whose expression crumbled immediately, but she could not help going on "You might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"

"You might just as well say," added another cosplay-girl, looking mortified, but continuing "that 'I like what I get' is exactly the same as 'I get what I like'!" And she broke down, and began crying.

The party fell silent for a minute, while Yuki went over everything that he could remember about Ravens and writing-desks (Which really wasn't much), and was completely oblivious to the cosplay-girls, who, save for the one that was crying, were all eyeing Yuki-chan.

The Hatter was the first to break the silence. "What day of the month is it?" she said, sounding confident.

Yuki considered this for a moment, before answering "The twenty-first."

"Two days wrong!" laughed the Hatter nervously, taking out her watch, and glaring at the Bunny-eared cosplay girl "I told you that butter was no good for this watch!"

"I-It was the best butter." replied the Bunny-cosplay girl meekly, looking as if she herself had no idea what she was saying.

"Yes, yes," agreed the Hatter, still sounding completely nervous "but some crumbs must have got in as well. Y-You shouldn't have put it in with the bread-knife" At which, she nodded, deciding that it sounded almost half correct, even though Yuki was looking at them as he began to understand why the Kyou-boy had told him that they were mad.

The Bunny-cosplay girl (Who Yuki was beginning to suspect was the March Hare) took the watch gloomily and looked at it, then abruptly dipped it in her tea, and took it out again: but she could not think of anything better to say than her first comment, "It was the best butter, you know."

Yuki had walked over and was now looking over her shoulder while she did this, with some curiosity.

"What a funny watch!" he remarked "It tells the day of the month, yet doesn't tell what o'clock it is?"

"Why should it?" blurted out the March Hare, quite freezing up with fright from Prince Yuki being so close.

Yuki was quite puzzled by this comment, so he had nothing to reply to her.

"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" asked the Hatter, looking a little more confident now.

"No," Yuki sighed "I give up. What's the answer?"

"I have no idea." said the Hatter.

"Nor do I!" trilled the other cosplay-girls.

Yuki sighed exasperatedly. "I wish you people would stop wasting time," he said, "by asking riddles with no answers."

The girls all shuddered, their expressions changing to near fear. "Oh no," one of them piped up "If you knew Time as well as we do, you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's her." And they all shuddered again at the mention of this enigma.

"I don't know what you're talking about…" Yuki said, looking puzzled yet again.

"Of course you wouldn't!" another said, in a low voice "I don't suppose she's ever tormented you…"

"I suppose not," Yuki replied "but I know that you have to beat time when you're learning music."

"I can't believe she puts up with it!" one of them commented, then smiled a little "Then again, it is the Prince…"

"If you didn't beat time," the Hatter explained "she would probably let you do anything you wanted with the clock. Imagine if you were about to go to a boring meeting or something of the sort. You could whisper into Time's ear, and she could switch it to much later, like seven o'clock- time for dinner!"

("I only wish it was," sighed the March Hare quietly)

"That would be useful, I suppose" said Yuki politely "But I wouldn't be very hungry."

"Oh, but you could keep it at seven o'clock for as long as you wanted, until you were!" laughed the Hatter, happy to be useful to the Prince.

"Is that the way you all manage?" asked Yuki, looking about at all of the Cosplay-girls.

The Hatter sighed, and looked over at a large medieval-looking chair at the other head of the table, which seemed to have a dark aurora surrounding it. "Not I!" she replied "We quarreled last March- just before she went mad, you know-" (She pointed her spoon at the March Hare) "-It was at a great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing:

'Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder where you're at!'

You know the song, perhaps?"

"I've heard something like it," Yuki nodded.

"It goes on, you know," said the Hatter excitedly "in this way:

'Up above the world you fly,

Like a tea-tray in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle-'"

She was interrupted by a voice which seemed to come from the ominous chair. "That's enough." ordered the voice of foreboding.

"Well, I had hardly finished the first verse," the Hatter went on quickly "When the Queen jumped up and shouted, 'She's Murdering time! Arrest her!'"

"How savage!" exclaimed Yuki, as he thought "And just for singing a song!"

"And ever since that," the Hatter went on, looking at the gothic-looking chair woefully "She won't leave us alone, and orders us about as she pleases! It's always 6 o'clock now."

A thought came into Yuki's head. "Is that why there is such a great deal of tea-things set up here?" he asked.

"Yes, that's it," said the Hatter with a sigh "It's always tea-time here, and we've no time to wash things in between."

"But what happens if you come to the beginning again?" Yuki ventured to ask, thoroughly curious.

"Suppose we change the subject," yawned one of the other cosplay-girls, glaring at the Hatter, who all of the others thought was much too greedy "I'm getting a little tired of this."

"And so am I." said that same voice that had interrupted the Hatter's tale earlier, sounding most acidic.

Most of the girls, looking frightened, fell off their chairs, hoping that Yuki might catch them (He wasn't fast enough, sadly).

A dark-haired girl stood up out of the surrounding darkness of the chair. Her long black, glossy hair fell down in cascades over her shoulders, and she held a staff in one hand. What was the most noticeable about her, however, were her eyes. They seemed like they were… devoid of a soul… or whatever dramatic phrase you would like to use. The only thing that looked out of place was the pair of cosplay mouse-ears.

"You. You've been talking and talking…" the girl sighed, folding her arms, and glaring at the cosplay-girls "And it's rather annoying. Very annoying…"

"Eheheh…" laughed the girls nervously, almost at exactly the same time, and trying to scramble away from there as fast as they could.

"I see…" said the girl, turning to a rather frightened Yuki "that they have been causing… trouble with your quest… Am I correct?"

"Oh, no, no they were fine!" Yuki smiled nervously. The girls made mental notes that not only was their Prince lovely and handsome, but kind as well, and that they should pay more worship to him later.

"Of course not, don't be stupid," sighed the girl "You'd best be off, to continue your journey. For you must, otherwise terrible things will happen. Terrible things… I'll see to them…"

Yuki dared not object, so be began walking off into the forest again. He looked back once, to see if they might call him back, and saw that the girl was following the cosplay-girls around the table, her staff crackling with electric energy.

"I don't think I'll go there again!" said Yuki as he picked his way through the wood "For I must admit, it was the stupidest tea-party I have ever been to in all of my life!"

Just as he said this, he came across a tree with a door in it. Yuki's conscience, who had kept quiet the whole time (For Yuki had somehow made it strike dumb), only folded its arms in dismay, for it had been trying to make Yuki go to this very tree the entire time. Yuki ignored it, naturally. "How strange," Yuki commented, examining the tree, and went inside straight away.

When he walked inside, he found himself in that same hall, with the rose-tinted table. "I'll manage much better this time," Yuki smiled, and began by taking the golden key from the table and unlocking the door that led into the garden.

Then he set to work nibbling at the mushroom (He had kept a piece of it in his pocket) until he was about a foot high, and then- he finally found himself in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower beds and cool fountains.

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I finished this chapter quite some time ago, but it took me a little longer to complete the illustration, sadly.

Here it is (Again, remove the spaces): htt p/www .deviantart. com/ deviation/ 19436153/

Hope you enjoyed this one- it was probably one of the only chapters that didn't take too long to type up! The eighth chapter presents the enigmatic Kingdom of Hearts! Fanfare blasts

Z-chan.