Black Kitten Chara: Here is chapter thirteen of this wonderful story (Haha, just made a joke there). I hope that you all like this chapter and please review!
DISCLAIMER: I do now own American McGee's Alice or Hollow Fields!
Claude stood up from his sleep in the back of a 2012 black Porsche Cayman S to see Carmen and Simon thrown on the floor of the backseat while Francine was in the seat with him. Claude rubbed his nose, still sore from the punch he got, as he looked behind to see the Mangled Mermaid in flames. For some reason, the flaming building hauntingly reminded him of Lucy's house the night it burned down.
"You okay back there?" Nan asked.
Claude turned to see that she was talking to him as his senses came back to him in full force. "Oh... What? The blood in my mouth tastes like bile." He tried to ignore the taste in his mouth as he looked outside of the gathering crowd who came to see the burning building. "Where's the brute that hit me?"
"Don't worry. Nasty prat's out cold. Not dead and more's the pity! The Bobbies came by and picked him up when we left, but no dobut that they would have questioned you if we didn't leave in time." Nan said.
"What the bloody hell did he want?" Claude asked as he began kicking Carmen and Simon to wake up.
"What they all want; Money he didn't earn." Nan said as the brunette put two and two together to figure out that Jack was Nan's pimp. The woman in the passenger's seat turned around and looked at him as she asked, "What were you think butting into that mess? You could have been killed!"
"Nan, we need help still. Lucy is missing still and we need to know something that could possibly help us and her." Claude said in his most charming voice, hoping to convice the woman. "We need to know more about the fire than what we saw."
Nan huffed and shook her head. "You four are just like Lucy. All she wants to know is about the fire, too. But you need to move on like I said."
Finally, the three teens that were still asleep woke up and rubbed their eyes. "What's going on?" Simon murmured, but Claude kicked him behind the head as he tried to continue with his conversation with Nan. The two girls and one boy who was upset over being kicked in the head as the conversation continued between Claude and Nan.
"Well, anything else about Lucy from the asylum?" Claude asked.
Nan sighed and turned back around to look at Claude again. "Well, maybe I wasn't completely honest with you before. Yes, she never said a sensible thing, her eyes were wide and dangerous, and she had terrible nightmares. But these days when I went to go see her, she was as fine as she could be. Yes, she had visions a few times or she would faint, but nothing that didn't seem unusual."
"So, that doctor she's see is actually doing a good job?" Carmen asked, earning her a murderous glare from Claude.
"Dr. Dales, that scoundrel. Unfortunately, his treatments are working but he once told me that Lucy is a harder patient than his younger ones were. He runs an orphanage and specializes in erasing bad memories, but all you see from his work is young kids out on the streets for greedy bastards to take them. They are like the defenseless ants that wasps consume, and it disgusted me!" Nan said with ice in her voice as she turned back around.
As she spoke thses words, the car passed an orphanage called The Wayward Orphanage, which was a tall and square building with an iron gate in front of it. Claude and his friends saw four small children, one girl and three boys, in nice outfits like they were going to a party. But the outfits looked like they were made for adults and there were three men surrounding the children as they spoke between themselves with greedy looks on their faces.
For a moment everything was quiet before Francine gave a small cough. Nan looked back as the small girl said, "What Dales is doing is wrong. All memories people have are there for a reason, and getting rid of them for the sake of young children who may or may not remember those memories is awful."
The car became quiet again as Claude felt Francine's pain. After being used as a "successful" experiment of the former headmistress, Ms. Weaver, for her god awful plans to extend human life, Francine and Simon had nothing near a normal life for a young mad scientist since their memories had to put in clones of the original bodies. Claude knew their pain since his older sister was used as a test experiment, and she still wasn't near of having her old life back besides having her body and memories back; she still had trouble remembering a few things and she had to use some medications to get through the day.
The car stayed silent for a moment before Carmen broke the ice. "Well, we still have more questions. What about this lawyer of hers? You said that he brought familiar faces around Lucy, but why didn't he bring us?"
"Why didn't you come here earlier?" Nan snapped.
Claude felt this blood pressure rise as he made Carmen shut up and let him speak. "Listen, just because we weren't here everyday for six years didn't mean we didn't care about Lucy. Nobody told us where she was, so we had look for three years for her. Then we had to get through all of this shit of actually seeing her for a year. For the first two years, we had at least finish high school."
"You like what, 16 through 18? How could you finish high school already?" Nan asked.
"We're geniuses, duh." Simon said.
Nan sighed as she finally had nothing else to ask them and looked at them. "Kaioh is a greedy man. All he wanted was the money that Mr. and Mrs. Snow left behind, but Lucy wouldn't agree with him on her good days and he finally gave up. I'm actually taking you to him right now because if you want answers, then at least he can give you some. He wrote the Inquest Report, so he must know something."
The four teens nodded their heads as they passed through stores and buildings that had Chinese influences to them. The car came to a slow stop as Carmen crossed her arms as Claude opened the door. The four got out as Nan stayed in and rolled down her window as some men came by, but Carmen elbowed her way through to see Nan
For a second, the two females looked at each other with tense glares; Carmen, a girl who believed that woman should never degrade themselves for any reason, and Nan, a woman who degrades herself to get through, were tense for a moment before Carmen finally spoke.
"Why do I feel like this Kaioh man will be completely useless?"
Nan broke out into laughter as she said, "Don't I know that!" She pointed to the house in front of the car before Claude dragged Carmen away from the car and the teens began walking towards the house.
The area they were in was heavily influence with Asian decorations, Asians running many of the stores, the smell of Asian cuisine cooking tainting the air, and many Asian languages being thrown around from the residents of the area. It was a colorful area with its handmade dragons, food, and vases in the windows of stores and beautifully-colored flowers outside these stories.
They walked up to the house, which was an old Victorian-styled house painted jade green with an iron gate around it, and Claude pushed the doorbell as a voice came through a small speak next to the doorbell. "Yes? Who is it?" It was a man with a British accent, but Claude could detect some Japanese behind his accent.
Claude spoke into the speaker, "Hello, Mister Kaioh. My name is Claude McGinty and I am a good friend of Lucy Snow, a girl whose family you once worked for. We need to talk."
"Ah, you're here about her. I suppose you better come in. Mind the latch." The voice said as Claude already opened the door.
They walked into a house that was colored the same jade green as the outside, if not darker, with flower designs on the walls. There were large vases that were gold, red, light blue, or jade green with dragons, flowers, or butterflies on them. The teens walked up the stairs to see watercolor drawings of dragons, flowers, trees, and butterflies with Japanese writing in the pictures. Claude saw that the stairs were covered in a dark blue carpenting and there was a set of swords, which Claude knew was a wakizashi and a katan, on the top of the stairs near an office.
Claude looked at his friends and said, "Let me talk to him." They nodded as Claude wlaked into the office to see it was the same as the rest of the house, only a samurai armour next the door and swords on the walls instead of watercolor pictures. There, behind a large oak desk, was a tall and thin man with light Asian skin, thinning black hair, a full moustache, and pitch black eyes behind thick glasses. He wore a pin-striped, black pajamas with a night cap.
But that wasn't what Claude noticed first. There, open on the desk, was a red journal that had gold writing saying Property of Lucy Snow on the front page. "You do have Lucy's journal!"
Kaioh sighed and said, "Forgot your manners, huh? I thought we were going to have a civil conversation about Lucy, not you accusing me of having a silly little book."
"We are going to talk about Lucy." Claude snapped as he held the back of a red velet seat. "Why do you have her journal and what do you know about Lucy's condition?"
Kaioh shook his head at the brunette. "Please. Lucy is filled with the same attitude and accusations, saying I stole her journal when she actually gave it to me for safe keeping. All the mad child wants to talk about is the fire besides accusing me of "stealing" her silly journal. And that is on her good days."
"What about the Inquest Report? You wrote it..." Claude said as he felt a headache pounding behind his head. He touched his temple as his vision began to look like pieces of a crack mirror.
"Well, my report found her family dead by misadventure. She won't accept it though, with her "need to know the truth", "her killing memories", and all that rubbish. The alleged truth is the fire started in the library when the cat knocked over the oil lamp. The blaze trapped her parents and sister upstairs. Her sister, Phoebe, never woke up and died in her bed." Kaioh said in a calm manner.
Claude felt his headache get worse and he had to keep himself from syaing that he knows that the cat didn't knock over the lamp, but he knew that Kaioh would send him to the ayslum if he says that he went to Wonderland and saw Lucy's memories for himself. So, he kept quiet as Kaioh looked at him with cold eyes.
"The gulity cat always sents her off. She denies it: "Make no sense", "It can't be," and so on. And I agree! From the outset, Lucy was my prime choice for the pyromaniac. The girl had a fixation with fire. I once remarked that I thought she might had a larger role in causing the fire. She suffered some kind of psychotic episode." Kaioh said.
Before Claude could strangle Kaioh for saying such rude things about Lucy, everything went black.
~0~
Claude felt his head pound as someone shook him. "Claude! Wake up!" The brunette opened his eyes to see Francine shaking him with fear in her eyes.
He grabbed his head and said, "What happened? Did I rip his head off? I wanted too..."
"What? Claude, there is nobody here." Francine said.
Claude looked to see that Kaioh's office was completely empty and the jade green paint chipping off the walls. There was a pile of junk replacing where Kaioh's desk was and something red was splattered on the walls. The windows were broken and boarded up with wood, and the sound of creaking steps and floors were heard as Carmen and Simon came into the office through an empty space where a door is supposed to be.
Claude stood up and looked around as he said, "What is left of my brain will explode." He looked at the empty office and at his friends. "Is it mad to ask for better hallucinations?"
His friends shrugged their shoulders as they walked down the stairs. But before he followed them, he saw a red journal on the floor. On an impluse, Claude grabbed the book and placed it in his jacket's inside pocket as he follwoed his friends down the stairs.
The entire house was now grey and the paint on the walls were chipped with a strange red liquid on the walls. The chairs, desks, and vases were either broken or flipped over like someone was robbing the place. Claude glupped as he opened the doors to see the snow was lightly falling on the ground, which wasn't there before when the teens walked into the house.
They walked outside and saw a small snowglobe on a stool, but the snowglobe was broken and there was a statue of the Mock Turtle in the middle of the snowglobe. "Yup, we're going insane." Simon murmured as they continued walking, seeing that huge musherooms were on fire on the street corners.
As they walked out of the narrow alley of houses, they finally saw the most disturbing sight to come.
They had entered a world that had a red sky filled with Ruin derbis and vortexs, a rocky ground with red dirt, Ruin covering the ground, dying plants and trees, firey craters, and the ground was broken into large chucks so they would look like flaoting islands in the red sky. And there, flying in the sky, was the Infernal Train as its high-pitched whistle was set off and more Ruin was thrown into Wonderland.
The teens were in shock as Francine yelled, "This bloody Ruin is corrupting all of Wonderland!"
As they continued, the Cheshire Cat appeared in front of them. Even though Wonderland was being corrupted, his creepy grin was still plastered on his face. "Seeking refuge from the wicked world? Perhaps things only look like they have gone to Hell."
"You're not that good of a lair and we're not that stupid. But something a little less calamitous would have been welcome." Claude sneered at the Cat. "And you're one to talk even though you were no help in Deluded Depths. Where have you been?"
"This unmitigated disaster is Lucy's doing. And it will get worse." Cheshire Cat said as he ignored Claude's question of where he was at. "Her train keeps a hellish schedule. Get moving! Time waits for nobody. The change in Lucy has begun..." Then he disappeared before Claude could ask anything else.
And before he could scream in frustration, the ground rummbled and three Menacing Ruin came from the ground. The teens turned to see the monsters right when the creatures pulled fire from its back, so they had to move from the attacks before even grabbing their own weapons.
"We're going-" Before Simon could say his famous line, Carmen punched him in the gut and he doubled over as they stood behind a rock. The dark-skinned girl looked behind the rock to see the Menacing Ruin trying to find the teens. Simon looked at the girl besides him and groaned, "Did you really have to punch me in the gut?"
As the Ruin looked for its prey, Claude nudged Francine in the side. The small girl instantly knew what he wanted he do to as she grabbed her umbrella and opened it. She walked away from behind the rock as she yelled, "Hey, uglies!" The Ruin looked at her as they grabbed fireballs at her, but she shot them back as they bounced off her umbrella.
Their arms broke off as Claude went after one Menacing Ruin, Simon went after another Menacing, and Carmen grabbed her croquet mallet and went after the third Menacing Ruin. They smashed the baby doll heads as quickly as they could while the Ruin tried to grabbed more fireballs.
"Hurry, guys!" Francine yelled as she hid behind a rock.
"Trying here!" Simon yelled as he broke off a baby doll head, leaving him one more to break off. Claude and Carmen broke off the final head of their Ruin monsters as Simon got one last shot and killed his Ruin, causing all three of the Ruin monsters to melt to the ground.
Francine let a long sigh out as she walked over to her friends, who looked tried and sweaty. "Damn, too many Ruins here. We need to get out of this place." Claude murmured under his breath as he got his breath back. He straighten up and placed his sword in the holder as he looked around. "But there doesn't look like a safe place for-"
"There's a safe place!" Francine squealed as she cut off Claude.
Her three friends turned to see where she was pointing to. There, floating in the air without a path for them to walk on, was a normal-looking area with a small isle made out of greenry and jade, which was surrounded by smoke. Francine looked at her friends with a goofy smile and said, "All we need to do is find a way over there."
Claude squinted his eyes as the floating island, but knew there was no way to get over there even if he uses some of his preception abilities. He sighed and was almost this close to telling Francine there was no way they could get over there when he heard a voice in his head. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, Claude." It was an old voice with a heavy British accent.
Claude looked at his friends to see if they heard the voice, but they were busy coming up with lans on how to get over there. "Who are you?" Claude said back, hoping it was his imagination.
"I am the one who knows all, but all I know right now is that you must get here quickly." The voice said.
"You're the Caterpillar, right? Are you over there, at the island?" Claude asked back, not wanting to do anything the voice asked until he knew whom he thought it was.
"Yes on both questions, Claude. Are you happy now?" The Caterpillar said in slight annoyance.
"Yes. Now, tell me how to get over there." Claude thought back.
"Simple. Just look behind you." The Caterpillar said as Claude turned to see a huge, red hookah covered in Ruin behind him. The Ruin was harden, so Claude walked over there and with his sword, broke through the barriar with a single slash and took the pipe of the hookah. "Now, take a smoke and let the drug affect your mind. A narrow mind is no help, but one that is open gives you a world of opportunies."
Claude grimaced on using whatever was in the hookah, but he placed the pipe in his mouth and took a huff of smoke into his lungs. The first thing he did was drop the pipe and cough wildly at the taste of the smoke. But what he did know was that a rocky path towards the island was being created as he coughed.
Claude finally got the taste of smoke out of his mouth, vowing never to place a cigarette or cigar in his mouth ever. He looked to see the rocky path being created as the Caterpillar spoke in his head again, "That vaporous ledge only appears as flimsy as your confidence in me. But it will hold you. Trust me."
"Why should I place my trust in something I never met? Want if that single step you were talking about is my last?" Claude thought back as he began to feel a litle light-headed.
But he got no answer back as Carmen came over to him and snapped her fingers in front of him. "Oi, Claude! Get that bum of yours moving!" Claude snapped out of his light-headness and stared with shock eyes as the rocky path now streched all of the way towards the island. Carmen pointed towards the path as she said, "It came for nowhere, but it is our only shot."
All Claude could so was nod his head as he followed Carmen towards the path as Simon and Francine were already ahead of them. The path was strudy enough and it didn't seem like it would break as the teens walked across it until they got to the floating island.
Claude looked around as he walked up to a small a mound of jade and greenery, with trickles of water running down the sides to form a pool around the bottom and wisps of smoke coming from a small temple on the top. As he got closer, a voice from inside the mound asked, "You are familair with the saying that smoking stops your growth?"
"Adults assaults children with that saying, usually while they have a cigar stuck in their mouth." Claude said, knowing that voice belong to the Caterpillar.
After he said this, rings of smoke came from the top of the isle as they surrounded Claude and his friends. "I won't ask you to inhale, just let the smoke surround you." The Caterpillar said as the smoke surrounded them and they began to shrink.