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Disclaimer: I do not own any characters from heart no kuni no alice, I do however own Ellie, Anita, Debbie and Veronica.

Chapter 2

Everybody on the bus was talking about how exciting it was to be on the road to camp. I was trying to tune them out and read a book but they were just too loud. Veronica and Ellie were sitting across the aisle from me. White and Black were sitting in front of me deep in conversation. When I looked at who was sitting behind me I wasn't surprised to see Julius.

"Hey Alice, what are you reading?" Ellie asked me.

I showed her the cover of the book. She made a face of disgust.

"I hated that book. The main character had no morals whatsoever. Are you reading it for school too?" Ellie said.

"Yes," I replied. "When did you read it?"

"A few years ago for a project, now I have to re-read it which is a real pain," she said.

"Ellie, Anita and Debbie are all avid readers. I for one don't care for them very much," Veronica said.

I shrugged and turned back to my book. I was able to read a few more pages before Vivaldi started yelling for everyone to quiet down.

"Alright, so now you must choose what movies you want to watch on the trip to camp," she said holding up three movies. "We will let you choose two of these movies to watch. And we have the power to overrule any movie we don't like."

"That's not fair!" someone said from the back. I turned around to see who it was. It was Dee and Dum and they were both standing up looking outraged.

"Hey! You two sit back down!" Elliot said standing up too.

"Shut up newbie hare!" Dum said.

Suddenly a sound like a whip cracked through the bus. Everyone turned to see White Joker who was holding an iPod touch in his left hand and a speaker in his right.

"Please sit down boys. Wouldn't want to get killed now would we?" White said pleasantly.

Dee, Dum and Elliot looked terrified and sat down hurriedly.

Vivaldi looked scared but she asked everyone who wanted to see what movie. I didn't vote, mainly because I didn't want to watch a movie. So I started to read again.

"Alice," said someone in front of me. I looked up. Both Jokers were looking at me.

"Yes?" I asked.

"You need to vote on a movie," Vivaldi said.

"Why? I don't really want to watch a movie anyway." I said.

"And your point is? You have to vote no matter what you want to f****** do on this d*** bus," Black said looking annoyed.

Did picking a movie matter that much. I pointed at the movie with the colorful box and said, "That movie then."

There was a groan from the back. "Not a chick flick," I heard someone say.

"Silence, we also happen to like this movie and we would have made you watch it anyway," Vivaldi said putting the movie in the DVD player.

I was able to finish reading my book without being bothered. I don't know how long I was on the bus for. I looked around a bit. Everyone seemed thoroughly absorbed in the movie. I looked out the window; there was farmland as far as the eye could see. It was very quaint.

I looked up at the movie. Some girl was making an ugly pink prom dress out of two other nicer looking dresses. I wasn't interested so I looked through my bag to find another book. I was hoping that they had a library at the camp I could get books from because I was not sure that three books would last the entire summer. I pulled out a notebook and a pencil and answered the reading questions I had taped in the notebook's cover.

Suddenly I felt the bus slow down. I looked out the window and saw we were pulling into a rest stop.

"Everybody please be quiet. You will have fifteen minutes to do whatever you want while we are here. If you are not here in fifteen minutes, we will send the Jokers to come find you," Vivaldi said as the door opened.

I got off of the bus and walked into the building. I went to the gift shop and bought a candy bar. I looked around and saw some of the other girls near a crane game machine. I walked over to see what they were up to.

"What are you doing?" I asked them.

"Watching Ellie... look!" she said pointing at the glass.

I looked. The claw was moving above the animals, it stopped over a pink cat and an orangey-brownish mouse. Then it dropped on the cat. When it rose, the claw was clamped shut on the cat and the mouse.

"It's a sign!" Debbie said. "You should go out with Boris!" she laughed.

The claw dropped the stuffed animals over a hole in the sea of stuffed animals. Ellie opened a door on the front of the machine and took out the two animals.

"Hey Alice, How's it going?" Ellie asked smiling and ignoring Debbie who looked furious.

"I'm fine, how did you win those?" I asked her.

"I just go for the animals on the top. I got lucky this time and won double prizes," Ellie said with a shrug.

"We were going to go get some candy. Do you want to come with us?" Anita asked.

"I'm just going to go back to the bus," I told her.

"Suit yourself," Ellie said.

I went back to the bus. The only ones there were the bus driver and Julius. Julius was just staring out the window apparently.

I sat back down in my seat and turned around.

"Hey Julius when do we eat lunch?" I asked him.

He looked at me and said, "Whenever you feel like eating lunch. They don't really care, as long as we eat before we arrive at camp."

He went back to staring out the window when Dee, Dum Elliot and Blood came back onto the bus.

"Hey Alice, did you go inside at all?" Elliot asked pleasantly.

"Yes I did for a few minutes," I replied tersely.

Everyone else seemed to come back just then. Everyone got into their seats and then Vivaldi said, "We do not want to take the role. If you are not here than say so."

"Vivaldi, I don't see Ace," said Veronica.

"Well that's just great. Now we have to go look for the f***** moron," Black said.

"Ellie where is he? He is your boyfriend," said Debbie.

"HE IS NOT MY BOYFRIEND DEBBIE. We just happen to be next door neighbors," Ellie said blushing.

"Ellie please tell us where he is," White Joker said nicely.

"I saw him heading out of the door that leads to the southbound parking lot," Ellie said.

"Thank you Ellie," White said heading out of the bus.

"Great now we have to go f****** moron hunting," Black grumbled as he followed White.

"How long do you think it will take to find him?" Anita asked.

"How should we know? That boy is an utter idiot," Vivaldi said.

"ALRIGHT PEOPLE PLACE YOUR BETS! HOW LONG DO YOU THINK IT WILL TAKE FOR THE JOKERS TO FIND ACE? CLOSEST GUESS WINS THE LOT!" Debbie yelled standing up.

Everyone yelled out random numbers and handed Debbie money. When Debbie collected all of the bets placed she looked at a stopwatch. Everyone was quiet now.

"Five minutes are up," Debbie said.

Someone groaned. They had obviously lost. Vivaldi even looked interested in this childish bet. Everyone was looking at Debbie eager to see how long this game could go. All of them, except for Ellie, who was gazing out of the window. That was suspicious.

I don't know how long it took but before Debbie announced ten minutes the Jokers came back on the bus dragging Ace by his collar.

"Well how much time did it take them?" Blood asked.

"Eight minutes and five seconds. Ellie wins the lot," Debbie said handing the money over to Ellie.

"How did you know that?" Boris asked.

"Easy, I saw Ace come from around the corner of the building just as the Jokers went inside," Ellie said. Everybody sat back in their seats grumbling quietly.

"Everyone sit down please. We would like to get to camp before sundown," Vivaldi said.

White looked at Veronica and said, "Is it okay if you and Ace trade seats? Ace is probably going to get lost on the way back and that would mean he would be standing for the whole bus ride."

"Not that we actually give a d*** but we would rather not get our a**** sued by his parents if he goes splat," Black added.

"You didn't have to phrase it so vulgarly Black." Veronica said. "Alice may I please sit next to you?"

"Um sure," I said moving my stuff off of the other chair.

After she had sat down the bus started moving. Vivaldi put on the next movie. I picked up my second book and began to read it. Veronica was listening to her IPod, which meant I didn't have to fake my way through a conversation.

For a while everything was nice and quiet. Then all of a sudden everyone started to talk and complain about something. I looked up. Veronica was still listening to her IPod unfazed by the sudden outburst of noise. Ellie and Ace also seemed unfazed by the noise. They were both leaning against each other, as though they were a couple.

"Everyone be quiet! We have an announcement to make!" Vivaldi said.

The chaos settled down. Vivaldi began to speak again saying, "We are almost at camp. We will be there in about twenty minutes. This is your last chance to use your cell phones before we reach the camp."

Everybody started using their cell phones. It was kind of funny. Vivaldi even pulled out a cell phone to call her friends with.

I thought I should call someone. But I really didn't want to talk to my family right now. However fate made the decision of who to talk to for me. My phone rang, Lorina was calling me.

"Hello?" I said into the phone.

"Alice, how are you? I was worried that you were at camp already and I missed the last opportunity to talk to you all summer," she said worriedly.

"I'm almost at camp so you nearly missed me," I said.

"Well I'm glad I called when I did. I wanted to say be sure to write to me this summer. I would love to hear about what you are doing," she said nicely.

"Okay I will," I told her.

"Good-bye Alice," Lorina said.

"Bye Lorina," I replied hanging up my phone and turning it off.

Everybody else was still using their phones. The low buzz of chatter filled the bus. It was very easy to ignore.

"Finished talking to your family already?" White asked.

"Yes," I replied and then I looked out of the window. The scenery had changed in a short period of time from farmland to a heavily wooded area. The further we went, the less and less civilization there seemed to be.

"It's pretty isn't it?" someone asked behind me.

I turned. Ellie was off of the phone and she was smiling at me. "One of my favorite things about camp is the beautiful scenery. Pictures can't properly describe the beauty of this place. That's why camp is awesome," she said.

"It is really quite peaceful at camp. It only gets loud and noisy when everyone is in a tightly packed room," Julius said from behind me. That surprised me; I hadn't realized he had been listening.

"The lake is really cool at night too. All of these stars reflect off of the water and it looks like a giant mirror," Ace added.

"They also have these beautiful rose gardens. Well actually, we're not allowed to go in there but we do anyway," Veronica said.

"You shouldn't be talking about rule-breaking in front of your counselors," White threatened.

Vivaldi hung up her cell phone. "That coming from the two most infamous troublemakers Camp Wonderland has ever had," she said.

"Well we're not about to let any d*** brat steal our title!" Black said.

"They are camp legends. I heard some little kids talking about these two heroes who made all of the really bad counselors leave. They seemed really happy about it. I also saw some older kids who were with them give looks of pain," Ace said.

"Well now you know what kind of reception you will be receiving from the counselors," Ellie said smiling.

"Whoopde f****** doo," Black said sarcastically.

Everyone else stopped talking then. I looked around to see that everyone was looking at us.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"We just lost our cell phone service," Vivaldi said looking at her phone. "We are only minutes away from camp now."

"Let's sing a song!" Ellie said.

"Why?" Debbie asked.

"Because sitting here in silence is really boring," Ellie replied.

"We agree with Ellie! Let's do something fun!" I heard the twins yell from the back.

Debbie stood up and said, "I just had a brilliant idea! Let's play assassin! Vivaldi can assign people their targets and if there is an odd number then one of the Jokers can play!"

"What are the rules?" someone- I think it was Boris- called from the back.

"Okay so everyone gets assigned a target that they have to kill. Well you can't actually kill your target for the obvious reasons, but you kill your target by getting them alone. You need to be at least ten feet away from everybody else and then you tell your target 'You're dead.' Then you have to find out who they were supposed to kill and kill that person too. It goes on until there is only one survivor," Debbie explained.

"We think this is a fantastic idea! We will get on to assigning pairs right away." Vivaldi said.

"Well that sounds like fun," White said.

"Hey, sit down you stupid b****," Black said to Debbie who stuck her tongue out at him.

"WAIT! I HAVE ANOTHER RULE OR TWO!" Debbie said suddenly. "Okay so two things; One NO ZOMBIES, you hear me? If you're dead you can't kill people. And the last rule I have is that if you get killed, you are not allowed to beat up the person who killed you. Okay I'm done no-"

"LOOK!" Ellie said pointing out of her window.

Everyone turned their heads to her side of the bus. The forest had opened up to a beautiful grassy plain. There were small houses in the distance that I assumed were the bunks. They were near a beautiful lake. And then scattered between the houses were slightly bigger buildings all leading up to the biggest building of all at the top of a short incline. A sign we drove under said CAMP WONDERLAND in bold writing. Bordering these two words were the suits from a deck of cards all in different colors.

"We're finally here!" Ellie said happily.

Let's get this over with. I thought to myself as the bus pulled to a stop.