Hi!! ^^
I'm sorry for made you wait so much. But you already know me well, right? I'm always late. No chance to change. Sorry^^"
Anyway I hope the chapter will compensate my lateness. And remember: R&R!!! Please!!
Ah, and please, clap your hands for my beloved beta, Flattered By Mockery. I'd be lost without her help!
Chapter 4
When they arrived in front of the house, Artemis took a big breath, and she opened the door.
"Master, I'm home."
No answer.
"It's impossible that he isn't at home. He never leaves the house," said Artemis, raising her eyebrows.
They entered in a little hall, completely empty except for a clothes-stand and a low shelf with various ledges.
"Please take off your shoes before entering."
The others did as she said. They took off their jackets too, because the house was very warm, and they put them on the clothes-stand. After doing this, they went toward a green door that was on the other side of the room.
"Master, it's Artemis. Didn't you hear me? There are some people who want to see you," said Artemis, opening it.
BAM!
As she did so, she was hit on the forehead by a ticking alarm clock coming from inside. The girl fell on the floor, her eyes rolling. The other four looked at her in shock.
"Obviously I heard you; I'm old, not deaf! How many times have I told you to knock before entering?!"
"That's a good start. He could have thrown something bigger at me," moaned Artemis, slowly getting up.
The four guys entered the room with caution, fearing that some other unidentified object might fly toward them. Waiting for them was a room, completely different from everything they had expected.
It was a world of color: The walls were decorated with light-colored tapestries and cloths, the floor was covered with oriental carpet, while red and blue reigned over other colors. There were two little closets at a side of the room, while on the other; a half-open door let them see into a small room with a table full of glass objects.
In the middle, lost in a sea of pillows, sat a short man; completely bald, with a black mustache which was very long and thin, and fell from the side of his mouth. He wore green oriental clothes, and he was smoking a narghilè with an annoyed expression, as a thread of smoke went out of his lips. But what surprised his guests the most, were two long spars that he had on his head.
"Amazing!" whispered Tyki in a low voice, his eyes widening.
"This must be the Caterpillar. Wow, he really smokes the narghilè!" exclaimed Lavi with a huge grin.
"Then, girl, can you explain to me who the hell those four are?"
"Ah, well, Master, those are four 'guests' from the Other World. Their names are Yu-"
"Don't call me that!"
"-Ehm, I meant to say; Kanda, Lavi, Tyki, and Allen. Guys, this is my Master, the Caterpillar."
"Nice to meet you," answered the four boys in chorus. Well, no, to speak the truth, Kanda only said 'Che!', but the general meaning was so.
The old man looked at them for a while. The four started to feel a little uncomfortable under that sharp gaze. Their sight went to Artemis, looking for help, but she seemed even more afraid that they did, drops of sweat going down her face.
"Well, well," the Caterpillar said finally. "So those are the four adventurers, eh? I have to say that their looks changed a lot, but I suppose that the Other World could have this effect on people."
He took a big breath from his narghilè, then he let out the smoke in a sequence of little rings, that dispersed themselves in the room. He must have put in some aromatic herb, because the smell of the smoke wasn't bad; he perfumed the room and created a comfortable space.
"Come on, take a pillow and sit down. I think we have a lot of things to say."
The four boys looked at each other for a moment, before sitting down on the pillows.
"It's been a lot of time since we haven't seen each other. I'm sure you have a lot of stories to tell me, right?"
The other occupants of the room stiffened. Allen shot a brief look to the others before starting to speak. "Well, we…we really don't know…how to start…" He moved uncomfortably, not knowing how to explain the situation.
The eyes of the old man became suspicious, and he looked at Artemis, seeing that she was glancing away.
"Artemis." he said in a low, threatening voice. The girl suddenly stiffened. "Have you something to tell me? Because, you know, my suggestion is to say it now."
She started to sweat profusely. "Ah, well, now that I think about it, there is a thing." She chucked nervously.
"I'm listening."
She started halfheartedly, looking at her hands while she united the tips of her fingers. "Well, like, you see, I succeeded on finding the people you were looking for." She swallowed hard. "But, well, there is a little problem…"
"What?"
"They don't…well…theydon'trememberanythingaboutthisWorld." she said in a breath.
A flash of irritation passed quickly through the eyes of the old man. He looked briefly at the guys.
"It's true?" he asked.
They nodded slowly, fearing to say a word.
"You're telling me that you brought four strangers here, that don't remember anything? That maybe they're not even the people we were looking for?" The voice of the Caterpillar seemed to come straight from North Siberia.
"…"
A 'yes,' barely heard, was whispered in answer.
And as retaliation of this, the alarm clock from before hit violently against the girl's forehead again, having the same effects as before.
"IDIOT APPRENTICE! When will you finally learn to use that microscopic brain that you have, rather that do without thinking before? I told you to look properly, not to bring the first people you find!"
Tyki and Kanda were paralyzed in their seats, while Lavi and Allen hid behind them, trembling.
"Ne, Allen, this situation feels something familiar to me." (1)
"Yeah, me too." (2)
The old man sighed loudly, trying to calm himself.
"Okay, tell me everything. From the beginning."
********************
After some minutes of explanation (and an ice-bag for Artemis) the atmosphere inside the room seemed to be a little calmer.
The caterpillar took a huge breathe from his pipe before starting to speak.
"I think that the best thing we can do now is to finish the explanation. Maybe when you have the situation a bit more cleared, we can find a solution for this mess."
In the meantime, Artemis had prepared some thè, and she offered it to her guests, still comfortably sitting on the pillows.
"Like you already know, Alice left her World for Wonderland. But she had a big problem: the Queen of Hearts was still very angry with her for the old story, and she wanted to capture Alice to sentence her to death. Obviously Alice, with the help of her new friends, hid herself from the Queen's soldiers, but the situation was becoming really dangerous. The Queen ruled the reign instead of her husband, the King, who was too weak to object to her, and she did it using fear and threats. So Alice and the others started to think of a plan to defeat her."
There was a little pause and some smoke rings.
"Then, something happened that made them take a definitive decision: the Duchess was killed by the Queen, who'd accused her of hiding Alice in her house. That was the last drop: Alice and her friends, with the help of some people that had also had enough of the Queen, assaulted the castle and removed the majesty. But Alice, who didn't want further death, decided to not kill the Queen, but exiled her to another Reign far away from here, called Through the Looking-Glass Reign, ruled by the White Queen. After that, all habitants of Wonderland chose Alice to be their new queen."
"Wow, it's unbelievable how many things aren't written in the book," said Allen.
"It's always like this," replied Lavi to him. "The greater part of the truth is never written in books."
"Do you know something about it, Bookman?" asked Tyki with a smirk.
Lavi smirked in response. "Uhm, maybe something."
"Can we stop babbling and finish this?!" shouted Kanda. The story was too long and Artemis's thé was far too sweet for his taste.
"I know that judging from my words, the story seems like it'll be finishing with a classic 'and they live happy 'til the end of their lives', but unfortunately, things went differently."
Some more smoke rings escaped from his mouth.
"Alice disappeared. And the Queen of Hearts was back to claim her reign. And she was much more powerful than before."
The others' looks became wary. "What do you mean by 'much more powerful'?"
"Maybe it's better explaining something about the magic that ruled this World," said the old man. "Artemis."
The girl nodded. "Do you remember when I told you that your powers couldn't work here?" They gave signs of assent. "Well, like I said, this World had a different magic."
"Most of the habitants have magical powers. Some are simply small things, like speaking to flowers or moving trees. But as the powers rise, the abilities and the dangers of the 'spell' do too. Clear enough?"
More signs of assent.
"In this World, all magic is based on 'control': the magic gives you control over a specific thing. That is called Reign, though with some limits. For example, at the lowest level, there is control over an object, in which you can move objects in the way you want, and so forth."
"As the levels get higher, we find control over the elements and incorporeal things: for example, you can move and model water, and even if you can't create it from nowhere, you must use what you already have."
"At the last level, here, you can have control over reality itself: meaning, you can control and modify the characteristics of the World, like time and space. And even influence people."
When the girl stopped talking, the looks on the others' faces were totally stupefied.
"B-but it's…an immense power!" exclaimed Lavi.
"And here lies our problem." intervened the Caterpillar, who had listened in silence until then. "When I said that the Queen had become stronger, I meant that she obtained a maximum leveled power: her Reign is the Death."
"The Death?!" asked Tyki. "It means that she could kill everyone she wanted to?"
"No, she couldn't do that much. But she can control what is dead, like the body and the spirits of the dead."
"Like…like a g-ghost?" said Allen shivering.
The old man nodded.
"When she returned to reign this kingdom, she did atrocious things!" spat Artemis. "She killed half of her guards only to create a zombie army for her service. And if this isn't enough, she found a way to imprison the spirit of an animal inside the body of another one, modifying nature and creating monsters. She's destroying this reign and killing people only for vengeance."
From the emphasis of her words, it was clear that she'd suffered quite a lot from what was happening.
"And you didn't do anything for stop her? You've already defeated her once, why the hell are you waiting to do it again?!" spat Kanda, annoyed. He hated people who complained about their situations and did absolutely nothing to change it.
Artemis turned toward him quickly. "Do you think we didn't try?! Do you think we remained here, watching her destroy everything? Well, if so, you haven't understood anything at all! Where do you think she found the spirits that serve her? Do you know how many of us have died trying to stop her?"
Her fists were so tight that the knuckles had become white. The anger was clearly readable on her face, and even Kanda felt a little intimidated by her.
"It hadn't been easy to defeat her the first time, but know it'll be ten times worse now. The Queen has become stronger, as we have become weaker."
"Weaker? How?" asked Tyki.
This time, it was the Caterpillar who answered. "We became weaker because the strongest of us, that guided the rebellion years ago, aren't here anymore. They left this World."
"Left this World? They're dead?"
"No, they left for the Other World." Some smoke rings went toward the four, as if to frame their faces. "This is why you are here. I sent Artemis to look for them, hoping that with their help we could have done something. But it seems that you aren't the people we were looking for."
"This isn't much, but it's obvious! Come on, do we really look like four characters out of a book?!" asked Allen, mostly directed to Artemis.
The girl blushed a little. "Well, you don't even seem like normal people, if I have to say so!"
The white-haired boy opened his mouth to speak, but thinking about this, he understood that she wasn't actually so wrong.
"And not only this," continued Artemis, trying to justify herself, "even if you aren't exactly the same, you resemble the people I was looking for a lot. And also, the Clock rang."
At this sentence, the spars of the Caterpillar suddenly straightened. "The Clock? But it was blocked, wasn't it?"
Artemis nodded. "I was surprised too. And I thought that maybe it meant something…"
"Ehm, if you would be kind enough to explain it to us…" intervened Lavi, but he was ignored.
"Give it to me for a moment," demanded the old man. When Artemis took the pocket watch and gave it to her master, he only took it in his hand, and closed his eyes. He remained in that position for some minutes, as silence in the room was extended.
When the Caterpillar opened his eyes, his sight went immediately on the four guys. And a little smiled appeared on his face.
"I don't like that smile, you know? It's the same as the Old Panda's," whispered Lavi to the others.
"You mean Bookman?! But I'd never seen him smile!" Replied Allen.
"Then you'd be lucky. When Gramps smiles, it means that someone else is just about to get in trouble. Generally me."
As if he hadn't heard them, the Caterpillar looked at Artemis. He pointed at the big book near the girl with a tilt of his head.
"You know, maybe your error isn't as big as I'd thought. I think we should try once, what do you think?"
Artemis face was illuminated. "Of course, Master!"
Then she looked toward the four boys, smiling. A smile which wanted to be sweet and comfortable, but which failed to be.
"It's that smile that I don't like at all. It reminds me of the smile Road has when she's just found a new doll to play with," murmured Tyki.
Kanda got up quickly. "Oi, what the hell are you planning?!" Anything they had in mind right now, he had had enough for that day.
"Don't worry" said Artemis, opening the book in front of her. "It'll be funny."
(1) insert an image of an angry Bookman with Panda's claws.
(2) insert an image of Cross with an hammer in his hand.
AUTHOR NOTE: I took the idea for the magic power from a role game called "Mage", edited by the Whitewolf. Obviously I modified it a little to adapted it at the story, I only take the idea of the Reign.