Princess Fantasy D X-2
A/N: I have never been inspired enough to write stories about any fanart before, until I saw the work of deviantart artist Skirtzzz, specifically her Final Fantasy Disney Dressphere series. With her blessing, this will be another part of a series of final scene rewrites, using the powers of the dresspheres to possibly change the script, or failing that, make the scene worthy of a Final Fantasy series. Replicating the feel for such an incredible franchise will be a challenge, but I swear I'll do my best!
If you haven't seen any of the movies or their endings, this could be a little spoilerific, but if you have or don't mind, hang on for the ride!
Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.
Jabberwock Jackpot
In Alice's opinion, this had to be the most confusing, most ridiculous, and most infuriating moment in her entire life.
Had she known that following that Cheshire Cat would lead to her being tried for royal humiliation, she never would've followed his advice. Now she was stuck in a kangaroo court of a trial, prosecuted by a tyrant of a Queen of Hearts, forced to listen to inane, irrelevant pieces of "evidence" by so-called "witnesses", and possibly sentenced to execution at the very end of it all.
And yet, instead of dreading her fate, the pomposity and pettiness of this so-called queen's was thinning her patience by the second.
Now, even as the Mad Hatter entertained the corpulent Queen of Hearts with her own "Unbirthday" Song, the little girl, thoroughly fed up by all the hogwash from the previous "witnesses", the March Hare and the Dormouse, was just idly glancing around the courtroom and trying to hide her growing frustration.
But that all changed when she looked up at the Queen unwrapping her Unbirthday present – a large purple, pearl-laden crown – and setting it on her head, over her old one. Alice's eyes widened when she saw the new crown sprout stripes, the pearls turn into teeth, and the entire thing metamorphose into the perpetually-grinning Cheshire Cat.
"Oh! Your majesty!"
"Oh, yes, my dear?" the Queen turned to her with a sickly-sweet smile.
"Look! There he is now!"
The Queen's smile went out like a light. "What? Where? Who?"
"The Cheshire Cat!"
"CAT?" the Queen roared, scrabbling at her head as the grinning cat vanished from her crown again. Alice's heart sank.
"CAT? CAT!" the Dormouse leapt out of the teapot in a panic. Scurrying over the Queen's face, he leapt to a tapestry behind her and scrambled up it in a wild attempt to escape, screeching "CAT CAT CAT!"
"Catch him! Catch him!" shouted the March Hare. In their madness, he and the Mad Hatter leapt after the rodent, shimmying up the tapestry. However, their combined weight sent the bolt of fabric crashing down onto the queen, sending all of them into a wild tangle of limbs and cloth.
"Help him! Catch him!" babbled the Hatter, holding onto the Dormouse's tail as they bounced along on the Queen's back. "Give me the jam! The jam!"
"The jam! The jam! By order of the king!" the diminutive King of Hearts called out, trying to regain order and swinging his gavel. The lines of card-bodied guards bumbled around, none of them sure what to do.
Trying to be helpful, Alice picked up the jar of jam from the counter and held it out. The March Hare grabbed the spoon from the jar, with a load of purple berry conserve already on it.
"Let me have it!" shrieked the Queen, finally extricating herself from the tapestry… only to receive a faceful of jam.
Meanwhile, the King, finally having spotted the fleeing Dormouse, was chasing it along the tapestry. The mouse scampered over the Queen's head, and the King brought his judge's gavel down… right over the Queen's noggin, denting her crown and smashing her face-first to the ground.
As the King looked down, realizing in horror what he had done, his oversized spouse started to stir from beneath him… and it was clear she was not happy. "SOMEBODY'S HEAD IS GOING TO ROLL FOR THIS!"
In a blind panic, the gavel was fumbled from the King, to the Hare, to the Hatter, to finally end up in Alice's hand, her other still holding the pot of jam. Too late, she realized what had happened. "Hey, wait – what is…?"
The tapestry tore, and the Queen's jam-streaked face emerged, black as thunder, to stare right at the girl with the evidence in her hands. "YOU!" she bellowed.
"But… but… your Majesty!" she sputtered, dropping the gavel and the jam.
"I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT, YOU LITTLE LIAR!" screeched the irate Queen, clearly petulant beyond all reason. "THERE IS NO CAT, ONLY A TROUBLEMAKING GIRL WITH NO RESPECT FOR THE QUEEN!"
Alice fumbled around, trying to think of some way out of this mess, but when her hands fell into her pockets, she found the pieces of growing mushroom left behind from her meeting with the hookah-smoking Caterpillar. "The mushroom…" she murmured, quickly gulping down both pieces at once.
"OFF WITH HER H-h-huh?" The Queen choked on her rage in confusion when Alice suddenly gave a choke of her own, clapping both hands to her mouth. From between her fingers, waves of sparkling purple smoke started to spew from her mouth, her eyes widening. All activity in the courtroom suddenly stalled as the smoke grew to completely engulf the girl and hide her from view.
Looking back on this incident, Alice would wonder if it was consuming both sides of the magic mushroom at the same time that resulted in the unusual effect. Or if it was some leak in the Caterpillar's hookah that caused this odd effect in those particular fragments of mushroom at that particular time. Or maybe it was just some odd, but completely "normal", Wonderland-ish effect.
But whatever the case, what Alice would most vividly remember about consuming the mushroom pieces was first the feeling of roiling discomfort in her stomach, then the fear as she started uncontrollably belching oddly-fragrant smoke, then the lightheadedness as the chaos now started to permeate into her mind…
Maybe it was this point that she finally succumbed to Wonderland's madness, but Alice still somewhat doubted it, as she could still clearly remember the thoughts that took place: that she had had enough of the Queen's temper and pettiness, that the monarch was probably taking the idea of beheading as nothing more than a childish game, and that if so… she might as well change the rules to a game of her own.
Everyone in the courtroom watched agape as the pluming cloud of smoke started to pick up speed, swirling around the girl like she was the eye of a growing storm. Nervous card soldiers started to back away, but more than one was blown off their feet by the growing winds and swept, flailing, into the maelstrom, much to the horror of their comrades.
The Queen's eyes were slowly getting wider by the moment, and her face looked torn between reddening with fury and paling with fear. Her husband had already made up his mind though; he looked on the verge of panicking like a headless chicken.
Suddenly, the whole vortex of sparkling smoke exploded out, scattering the remaining ranks like the playing cards they were. The Hatter's hat was nearly blown off his head, the Dormouse and the Hare were both blown ears-over-tail, and the Queeen was practically blown over backwards, almost squashing the King with her girth.
"Why you…" the Queen's bloomer-covered legs kicked in the air for a minute before she righted herself, on the verge of boiling over. "THIS IS THE LAST STRAW! OFF WITH HER…"
"Now, now, your Majesty," came a voice from the dissipating cloud that was altogether too mature to be the child they saw before, cutting the Queen off, "such temper is awfully unfitting for royalty such as yourself. One wonders if you are taking this trial seriously at all?"
"Perhaps you think this is just some sort of game?"
Fingers clicked, and the last vestiges of smoke poofed away. "Because if so, I hope you're feeling lucky, because you're playing by my rules now."
Jaws dropped from everyone watching.
Sitting on the edge of the podium with one leg demurely crossed over the other was the blonde girl that was obviously Alice, but was clearly a young woman in her 20s instead of a young girl of 11. Moreover, she was dressed in the most outrageous and revealing outfit any of them had ever seen. It was a similar shade of blue as her original blue dress, but the main dress was not only bereft of sleeves, it exposed a length of skin right down her front from her collar to her navel, barely managing to cover the breasts she had somehow grown. With the trail of the dress winding around her legs, her red-heeled shoes and light-blue bloomers hemmed with red thread were visible for all to see, the same sky-blue as her new gloves, collar, and the lengths of cloth wound around her biceps and legs. All over her outfit were motifs of the four card suits: from the red diamonds around her collar, to the club shapes cut into her dress, and the spade-and-heart-shaped decorations on her legs, in addition to all four symbols tattooed on her chest. To finish it all off, a pair of white rabbit-ears sat cutely on her head on a headband, an old-fashioned pocket watch swung from one hand, and the other held four oversized cards, a hand of four aces.
Upon seeing Alice's new outfit, the March Hare's eyes bulged out and his ears spun like helicopter blades. The Mad Hatter's face went purple and the top of his top hat flipped open like a chimney to let out a blast of steam. The King of Hearts just stared with his tongue hanging out… until the irate Queen snatched up the discarded gavel and conked him on the head.
"What is the meaning of this?" she bellowed. "How dare you show your face in my court with an outfit like that?"
"It means, your Majesty," Alice replied calmly, and even the Queen could hear the mocking tone in the latter two words, "that I have had quite enough of your tantrums. If you keep pushing your luck and your temper, you'll come across someone who just will not take it."
"Enough! Enough! I have had enough with you and your insolence!" the Queen's temper had now gone volcanic. "GUARDS! OFF WITH HER HEAD!"
As one, the ranks of red and black playing cards rushed forward with spears and axes raised, but Alice didn't bat an eyelid. "Oh, so you do want to try your luck then?" she asked, shuffling the four cards in her hand, then pulling them apart to reveal a full deck in her hand. "Then let's begin. Card Draw!"
As the first five soldiers advanced on her (5 of Hearts, 5 of Diamonds, 4 of Spades, 7 of Hearts and 4 of Diamonds), with a flourish, Alice pulled the top five oversized cards from her deck with a trail of sparkles, before glancing at them.
"Only Two Pair?" she tutted, flipping her hand around to reveal a 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of various suits. "I'm afraid a Straight beats that." All five cards flickered with energy, before she flung them out at the advancing line. A disembodied male voice suddenly boomed out jauntily: "9 High Straight! Tornado!" and a horizontal vortex of wind roared out, catching the soldiers and sending the entire battalion of paper soldiers spiraling to the back of the courtroom.
After a few tugs, the King of Hearts managed to unstick his crown from his head, and scrabbled for the book of rules before his wife turned her anger on him. "Rule Fifty-Seven: All persons or creatures with obvious magical abilities are banned from court… Rule Fifty-Eight: Women must be fully covered at all times or risk execution… Er... I say, my dear… isn't that a bit harsh for someone as beautiful as she…"
He automatically choked on his words when the Queen gave him a glare that wouldn't look out of place on a gorgon. "… I mean, her attire is completely unworthy of being in your presence, my dear…"
"Oh pooh," huffed Alice, squeezing her deck in between both hands and changing it into a pair of dice. "I'm not afraid of you or your rules, and I'm certainly not going to let you execute me for a reason like that! Two Dice!"
With a flick of the wrist, the young girl pitched both dice at the King. Both cubes beaned the little man square in the nose, knocking him clean off the podium and flat on his face, the heavy book flopping down on top of him.
When the King managed to poke his head out, he found his nose an inch away from the two dice lying in front of him, both showing 1s. "Eh? Two?"
"Snake eyes? Well, it seems you've lucked out, your Highness," answered Alice coolly, right as both dice exploded in showers of sparks, propelling the King clear off the stand like a rocket.
"My apologies, but my head is staying right where it is, thank you very much," declared Alice, as the smoke from the explosion flowed back into her hand and reformed into her deck of cards.
"You…. YOU…" the Queen was so red she looked on the verge of apoplexy, twitching her fingers as if dreaming of strangling the insolent girl, "WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU…"
"… maybe you'll learn to control your anger before it comes back to bite you," Alice responded, before something brightly-colored caught her eye. She tilted her head to look past the Queen, to see the familiar pink and purple Cheshire Cat trying to sneak away along the back wall.
"And maybe you'll also learn to hold your tongue and not to just jump to conclusions," she continued, "especially when I have proof that I wasn't the one who played that trick on you. Isn't that right, Cat?"
Her exclamation made the technicolor feline freeze, before he turned to meet Alice's unamused gaze. "So, nearly getting my head cut off is your idea of fun, Mr. Cheshire? I fail to see the humor."
The Cat gave his signature smile, although Alice could see it was more strained than normal. "Why, my dear girl, how can you blame me for that? After all, I wasn't all there then, and I'm certainly not all here now." He started to fade away, one stripe at a time.
"Oh no, you don't! Card Draw!" snapped Alice, whipping 5 more cards off her deck and glancing them. Her mouth quirked into a smirk of her own.
"You're not getting away this time, Cat!" she said, hurling the cards (Three 8s, one 10 & one 2), one by one, at the feline, who gave a yowl and tried to scamper away while vanishing into thin air.
Once again, the disembodied voice shouted out, "Three 8s of a Kind! Dispel!" Magic flickered around the cards, but the first one in line only embedded itself into the wall like a knife, right where the cat was a moment ago, as the now-half-bodied Cheshire Cat made a break for the far door. The next few cards missed as well, but the last one grazed the tufts on the Cheshire Cat's head right before it disappeared.
That was all it took, as instantly the Cat's body blinked back to full solidity. The disruption of his trick completely wiped the smile from the Cat's face, and he stumbled and went rolling along the ground, ending up flat on his face.
Alice allowed herself a smile. " 'Not all there', you say, Cat? Doesn't look that way to me."
The Queen whipped around at the commotion behind her, to see the corpulent feline trying to shake the dizziness out of his head. She blinked in sudden realization at the proof staring her right in the face, and the Cat blinked as well when he found himself exposed. Instantly, he gave a feline yowl and tried to bolt.
"Random Reels!" Alice called out, clapping her deck between her hands. She pulled them apart to reveal three white wheels rotating at high speeds in front of her. The girl-turned-woman looked down as the wheels stopped with a clunk, one by one, displaying three crossed-sword symbols in a line. Another smile crossed her face. "And this is for all the trouble you caused me, Cat!"
Once again, the invisible announcer boomed out. "Success! Quartet Knife!" The reels flared white, and four bolts of light shot out of them straight towards the fleeing Cheshire Cat. Four thuds and a cat's cry later, the Cat froze in place, trembling, as four steel knives trembled from where they had embedded themselves in the wall around him, pinning him in place and missing his body by millimeters.
"For the love of hairballs!" he wailed, "This isn't fun at all!"
"Well, it seems you've run out of luck, Cat," said Alice, before turning her attention back to the Queen, who was staring at the knives with more than a little nervousness. "So, your Majesty, I presume you have an apology for me?"
However, even faced with proof of her own false accusation and the threat of someone vastly more powerful, the Queen still remained belligerent. "A…APOLOGY?!" she sputtered stubbornly, "Who do you think you are, demanding an apology from ME? I am the Queen of Hearts! YOU are supposed to apologize to ME!" The last statement was bellowed so close into Alice's face that her blonde hair blew back from sheer volume.
Alice brushed back her rumpled locks. "Apologize for what?" she snapped, finally deciding to let the Queen know exactly what she thought about the whole shemozzle. "Defending myself against this absurdity of a trial; against a so-called Queen who clearly cannot see the truth, even when it's staring her in the face? Magic Reel!"
She cast her deck into the air, which instantly transformed into the three floating slot wheels spinning behind her head. " 'Queen' my foot! You, my dear Majesty, are nothing more than a fat, pompous, bad-tempered, moronic old tyrant, and this is just what I think of you and your court!" She jabbed a thumb at the reels as they began to slow down.
All eyes turned to the slots as they clacked to a stop. However, what they showed made everyone gasp, made Alice's heart drop, and pasted a huge, smug grin on the Queen's face.
The reels now showed three symbols, and none of them matched each other.
The announcer's voice, now sounding very apologetic, yelled out, "Ohhh, too bad! That's a Dud!" Instantly, the girl suddenly flared a deep purple colour, and her entire body suddenly felt a million times heavier than before. Before she could do anything more than collapse to her knees under the strain, the wooden podium beneath her feet creaked, groaned, and finally collapsed in a cloud of dust and wood splinters.
When Alice finally managed to dig herself out of the pile of debris, the first thing she saw was the victorious leer of the Queen, glaring right into her face. Surrounding them were several battalions of card soldiers and the Wonderland onlookers. "Hah!" she cackled. "That's what you think of me? How pathetic!"
Before Alice could respond, the Ace of Hearts and the 10 of Hearts grasped her by the shoulders and hauled her out of the rubble. The Queen gripped her face, painfully pinching her cheeks. "Now who's the one who's run out of luck? You little brat!" She shoved her head forcefully back, and would've pushed her over if the two cards holding her hadn't forced her to her knees and her head down.
"Now, this is something I have been waiting for all day," snarled the oversized monarch, holding out one hand. Dutifully, the Jack of Hearts walked over and handed her a gleaming sword with a heart-shaped hilt. "For the crimes of interfering with my croquet game, making me look like a fool, for not showing me proper respect, and especially for driving me crazy…"
She raised the sword above Alice's neck, "OFF WITH YOUR IMPUDENT… WHAT?!" she bellowed at her husband who was tugging innocently at her coat.
"Now… now, consider dear, it wouldn't be very sporting if, you know, you didn't allow her some last words before the execution… so could you? Please?" He gave a cute little smile, as he did the last two times.
But this time the Queen was too riled up to give a damn. "TO BLAZES WITH HER LAST WORDS!" she roared in his face, making him cringe.
"Well, if you insist, your Highness," murmured Alice, silently grateful that her royal pomposity was too puffed up to notice that she had managed to keep hold of her cards throughout the whole ordeal. Giving them a quick squeeze, she let go of the deck. "Four Dice!"
In a flash of light, the falling cards fused and split into four large dice, which rattled to the floor. The crowd of card soldiers caught sight of the four 4s now looking back up at them, and all of them gasped in unison.
Sixteen sparkling explosions roared out, blanketing the entire area in glittering smoke and blasting everyone off their feet. The Queen of Hearts pulled herself upright and swiped aside the smoke, to see her soldiers staggering about and no Alice in sight. "What happened? Where did she go?" she yelled at them. "Who's the moron that forgot to take away those stupid cards of hers?"
Everyone else exchanged glances, none of them wanting to be the bearer of bad news to a human powder keg. But someone else did it for them.
"I believe that moron is you, your Majesty," called a voice from the other side of the room, and everyone turned to see a panting Alice right beside the exit of the courtroom, the smoke flowing to her hands and congealing back into her deck.
The Queen's crown all but exploded off her head as her temper went up like a solar flare. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE YOU FOOLS!" she shrieked. "OFF WITH HER HEAD!"
Like a blizzard, the soldiers lunged for her in large arcs of falling cards, as if to bury her under an avalanche of paper bodies. The Queen charged towards the girl like an angry bull, sword slashing the air.
"You heard what her Majesty said!" squeaked the King through a megaphone, flanked by the Ace, 10 and Jack of Hearts as they ran after the monarch. "Off with her head!"
Despite the literal torrent of opposition pouring down on her, all Alice did was sigh in exasperation. "Oh, your Majesty, don't you know how to say anything else? And when will you ever learn that whining like a spoiled child never gets you what you want?"
Her hands went to her deck even as the distance between her and the cantankerous Queen closed rapidly. "After all, don't you know how this game works? You throw a tantrum, you forfeit the game. And when you forfeit the game…"
Five cards were whipped off the deck, and fanned out in front of Alice without her even looking at them. A gleam flickered in her eye. "…you lose! Card Draw!"
The Queen came face to face with a 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace of Spades, right before the oversized cards lit up like the dawning sun. For the last time, the announcer boomed out over everyone's head.
"ROYAL STRAIGHT FLUSH! SUPERNOVA!"
All at once, the cards in her hand erupted in a blazing corona of light, flame and force, blowing everyone in range backwards, flailing and howling in pain. The Queen and King, all the card soldiers, and everyone else in the pursuit were hurled clear across the room, even as the walls crumbled and the entire world seemed to disintegrate before them.
To Alice however, it just felt like the world's biggest flashbulb had gone up in front of her, and a wave of heat rolled over like a bonfire. She cried out and shut her eyes tightly, trying to block out the glare as it burned into her very being…
…and then her eyes flew open with a gasp, only for her to close them again as the sun glared right in her face. Squinting against the light, she sat up and looked around.
She was back in the field where she was listening to her sister Mathilda's lesson, with the mid-afternoon sun shining down on her where she had apparently fallen asleep under a tree. Her little cat Dinah was still snoozing on her lap, and she was back as she had been, 11 years old and clothed in a sky-blue dress and apron.
As Alice tried to sort out the jumble of memories running through her head, Mathilda's voice suddenly caught her attention. "Alice? Alice! What on earth are you doing sleeping?"
"Oh? Oh!" Alice bolted upright, dislodging Dinah with an annoyed mewl, to look at Mathilda with a guilty expression. All her courage in the face of authority that had led to her victory over the Queen of Hearts had seemed to have disappeared in the face of her sister, but she decided it was because Mathilda would never wish her harm, the Queen was less of an authority when from her older perspective, and it was all in her mind anyway.
Scrabbling for an answer, she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind, which was the spiel of the oversized hookah-smoking Caterpillar. "Um… er… how doth the little crocodile, improve his shining tail. And pour the waters of the..."
Mathilda was puzzled and a little annoyed at the spiel. "Alice, what are you talking about?"
Alice finally realized what she was saying and stopped. "Oh, I'm sorry, but you see, the Caterpillar said..."
"Caterpillar? Oh, for goodness sake…" it was clear to Mathilda that her little sister had gotten lost in her own head yet again. "Alice, I… oh well."
Deciding against giving Alice a lecture about paying attention to her lessons, Mathilda gathered up her skirts as she looked at the sun that was just starting its descent. "Come along, it's time for tea."
Alice nodded in agreement, grateful that she wasn't in more trouble. Scooping up the little kitten, she followed her sister across the stone bridge back towards town. The memories of her time as an adult were chasing around her head, and although the whole thing was just a dream, she could remember all those thoughts as clear as day.
As she walked, one hand drifted to her apron pocket. She blinked suddenly when she felt something odd inside it, something that certainly wasn't there before. She pulled out what she felt, and she let out a small gasp when she saw what it was.
A strange card now sat in her hand, with an image of her older self looking out from it.
Alice blinked and looked around at the real world, suddenly a lot more unsure of what had happened in Wonderland.
Maybe it wasn't such a dream after all…
Well, here's another chapter ready for everyone! Hope you enjoy it!
Once again, I hope this chapter passes muster. I'm really sorry for the long wait. Between a lousy hand injury that left it in stitches and issues with my housing situation, I really can't blame myself for taking this long to write this out.
Skirtzzz, thank you so much for waiting again! I know it's been a long time, but I really hope you enjoy this installment!
Find Alice's lady luck costume, created by the talented DeviantArtist Skirtzzz here (scrap all the spaces)!:
skirtzzz . deviantart dotcom / art / Lady – Luck – Alice – 289936450
Review and Critique please; I'd really like to know someone's reading this! But please, no flaming!
Next Chapter: The Wiccan Wanderer